History Books

THE COMING OF THE FRIARS. Sweet St. Francis of Assisi, would that he were here again!—LordTennyson. When King Richard of England, whom men call the Lion-hearted, was wasting his time at Messina, after his boisterous fashion, in the winter of 1190, he heard of the fame of Abbot Joachim, and sent for that renowned personage, that he might hear from his own lips the words of prophecy and their... more...

Historical Introduction by Edward Gaylord Bourne The American people are confronted with two race problems, one within their own confines and long familiar but still baffling solution; the other, new, remote, unknown, and even more imperatively demanding intelligent and unremitting effort for its mastery. In the first case there are some eight millions of people ultimately derived from various savage... more...

CHAPTER I. The Emperor Theodore—His Rise and Conquests—His Army and Administration—Causes of his Fall—His Personal Appearance and Character—His Household and Private Life. Lij Kassa, better known as the Emperor Theodore, was born in Kouara about the year 1818. His father was a noble of Abyssinia, and his uncle, the celebrated Dejatch Comfou, had for many years governed the provinces of... more...

I. THE ICE FOLK AND THE EARTH FOLK. The first Ohio stories are part of the common story of the wonderful Ice Age, when a frozen deluge pushed down from the north, and covered a vast part of the earth's surface with slowly moving glaciers. The traces that this age left in Ohio are much the same as it left elsewhere, and the signs that there were people here ten thousand years ago, when the glaciers... more...

WHEN first "Things as they are" trod the untrodden way, it walked as a small child walks when for the first time it ventures forth upon young, uncertain feet. It has to walk; it does not know why: it only knows there is no choice about it. But there is an eager looking for an outstretched hand, and an instant gratefulness always, for even a finger. A whole hand given without reserve is something... more...

INTRODUCTION In the year 1864 Mr. Henry C. Murphy, then corresponding secretary of the Long Island Historical Society, had the good fortune to find in an old book-store in Amsterdam a manuscript whose bearings upon the history of the middle group of American colonies made it, when translated and made accessible as a publication in the Memoirs of the Long Island Historical Society, an historical... more...

PREFACE In introducing the student to the history of the development of European culture, the problem of proportion has seemed to me, throughout, the fundamental one. Consequently I have endeavored not only to state matters truly and clearly but also to bring the narrative into harmony with the most recent conceptions of the relative importance of past events and institutions. It has seemed best, in an... more...

THE THIRD VOYAGE Columbus was at sea again; firm ground to him, although so treacherous and unstable to most of us; and as he saw the Spanish coast sinking down on the horizon he could shake himself free from his troubles, and feel that once more he was in a situation of which he was master. He first touched at Porto Santo, where, if the story of his residence there be true, there must have been potent... more...

CLOTHING: ITS RAPID DETERIORATION, AND DEVICES TO REPLENISH IT—DESPERATE EFFORTS TO COVER NAKEDNESS—"LITTLE RED CAP" AND HIS LETTER. Clothing had now become an object of real solicitude to us older prisoners. The veterans of our crowd—the surviving remnant of those captured at Gettysburg—had been prisoners over a year. The next in seniority—the Chickamauga boys—had been in ten... more...

EDITOR'S PREFACE Professor Maspero does not need to be introduced to us. His name is well known in England and America as that of one of the chief masters of Egyptian science as well as of ancient Oriental history and archaeology. Alike as a philologist, a historian, and an archaeologist, he occupies a foremost place in the annals of modern knowledge and research. He possesses that quick... more...