General Books

This sketch was prepared by request to be read before the Jamaica Plain Ladies' Tuesday Club. Subsequently a desire was expressed to have it put in a more permanent form and offered for sale at a Fair for the Jamaica Plain Indian Association. Although personally reluctant to appear before the public in this way, I have allowed my desire to aid a good cause and give pleasure to my friends who have... more...

INTRODUCTION n every century for more than two thousand years, many men have owed their chief enjoyment of life to books. The bibliomaniac of today had his prototype in ancient Rome, where book collecting was fashionable as early as the first century of the Christian era. Four centuries earlier there was an active trade in books at Athens, then the center of the book production of the world. This... more...

1. PRIMITIVE ASTRONOMY AND ASTROLOGY. The growth of intelligence in the human race has its counterpart in that of the individual, especially in the earliest stages. Intellectual activity and the development of reasoning powers are in both cases based upon the accumulation of experiences, and on the comparison, classification, arrangement, and nomenclature of these experiences. During the infancy of... more...

SAMUEL ELIOT History of the United States Samuel Eliot, a historian and educator, was born in Boston in 1821, graduated at Harvard in 1839, was engaged in business for two years, and then travelled and studied abroad for four years more. On his return, he took up tutoring and gave gratuitous instruction to classes of young workingmen. He became professor of history and political science in Trinity... more...

THE STORY OF THE MANX KINGS There are just two ideas which are associated in the popular imagination with the first thought of the Isle of Man. The one is that Manxmen have three legs, and the other that Manx cats have no tails. But whatever the popular conception, or misconception, of Man and its people, I shall assume that what you ask from me is that simple knowledge of simple things which has come... more...

INTRODUCTION. While this work does not pretend to be a history, it will yet present many historical facts. Its object is to show from old newspapers, which are not accessible to all, such items and comments upon a variety of subjects as might be supposed to amuse or instruct both old and young. It is not the easy thing that many imagine to examine, read, and select from a vast number of newspapers such... more...

PREFACE In approaching "The Historical Nights' Entertainment" I set myself the task of reconstructing, in the fullest possible detail and with all the colour available from surviving records, a group of more or less famous events. I would select for my purpose those which were in themselves bizarre and resulting from the interplay of human passions, and whilst relating each of these events... more...

This history of woodworking hand tools from the 17th to the 20th century is one of a very gradual evolution of tools through generations of craftsmen. As a result, the sources of changes in design are almost impossible to ascertain. Published sources, moreover, have been concerned primarily with the object shaped by the tool rather than the tool itself. The resulting scarcity of information is somewhat... more...

THE WAR THAT NEVER ENDS If, at last the sword is sheathed,And men, exhausted, call it peace,Old Nature wears no olive wreath,The weapons change—war does not cease. The little struggling blades of grassThat lift their heads and will not die,The vines that climb where sunbeams pass,And fight their way toward the sky! And every soul that God has made,Who from despair their lives defendAnd struggling... more...

VOLUME I [p 2 is blank] p 3 TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. ———————————- I CAN not more appropriately introduce the Cosmos than by presenting a brief sketch of the life of its illustrious author.* While the name of Alexander von Humboldt is familiar to every one, few, perhaps, are aware of the peculiar circumstances of his scientific career and of the extent of his labors in almost... more...