General Books

CHAPTER I I was down on the card to make a quick jump to Pittsburg a few nights ago, and I'm a lemon if I didn't draw an upper berth in the sleeping car thing! Say! I'll be one of a party of six to go before Congress and tell all I know about an upper berth. And I'd like to tell it right now while I'm good and hot around the collar. The upper berth in a sleeping car is the same... more...

With learning may laughter be found,“’Tis good to be merry and wise;”To gaily get over the ground,As higher and higher we rise.Some children their letters may learn,While others will surely do more,As the subjects suggestively turnTo matters not thought of before.Descriptions and pictures combinedAre here made attractive and clear;So suited that children may findFrom error the truth to... more...

PREFACE. Again it come to pass, in the fulness of time, that my companion, Josiah Allen, see me walk up and take my ink stand off of the manteltry piece, and carry it with a calm and majestick gait to the corner of the settin' room table devoted by me to literary pursuits. And he sez to me: "What are you goin' to tackle now, Samantha?" And sez I, with quite a good deal of dignity,... more...

William Dean HowellsNot squirrels in the park aloneHis love and winter-kindness own.When Literary Fledglings tryTheir wings, in first attempt to fly,They flutter down to Franklin Square,Where Howells in his "Easy Chair"Like good Saint Francis scatters crumbsOf Hope, to each small bird that comes.And since Bread, cast upon the main,Must to the giver come again,I tender now, long overtime,This... more...

A man of kind and noble mindWas H. Gustavus Hyde.’Twould be amiss to add to thisAt present, for he died,In full possession of his senses,The day before my tale commences.One half his gold his four-year-oldSon Paul was known to win,And Beatrix, whose age was six,For all the rest came in,Perceiving which, their Uncle Ben didA thing that people said was splendid.For by the hand he took them, andRemarked... more...

ON THE POSSESSION OF A SENSE OF HUMOR "Man," says Hazlitt, "is the only animal that laughs and weeps, for he is the only animal that is struck with the difference between what things are and what they ought to be." The sources, then, of laughter and tears come very close together. At the difference between things as they are and as they ought to be we laugh, or we weep; it would depend,... more...

Biographical Edgar Wilson Nye was whole-souled, big-hearted and genial. Those who knew him lost sight of the humorist in the wholesome friend. He was born August 25, 1850, in Shirley, Piscataquis County, Maine. Poverty of resources drove the family to St. Croix Valley, Wisconsin, where they hoped to be able to live under conditions less severe. After receiving a meager schooling, he entered a... more...

THE MOTE IN THE MIDDLE DISTANCE By H*NRY J*M*S It was with the sense of a, for him, very memorable something that he peered now into the immediate future, and tried, not without compunction, to take that period up where he had, prospectively, left it. But just where the deuce had he left it? The consciousness of dubiety was, for our friend, not, this morning, quite yet clean-cut enough to outline the... more...

INTRODUCTION It is a curious fact that of that class of literature to which Munchausen belongs, that namely of Voyages Imaginaires, the three great types should have all been created in England. Utopia, Robinson Crusoe, and Gulliver, illustrating respectively the philosophical, the edifying, and the satirical type of fictitious travel, were all written in England, and at the end of the eighteenth... more...

GRAINS OF TRUTH BY BILL NYE A young friend has written to me as follows: "Could you tell me something of the location of the porcelain works in Sèvres, France, and what the process is of making those beautiful things which come from there? How is the name of the town pronounced? Can you tell me anything of the history of Mme. Pompadour? Who was the Dauphin? Did you learn anything of Louis XV... more...