Non-Classifiable Books

Preface here is no need here to enter a plea for story-telling. Its value in the home and in the school is assured. Miss Bryant, in her charming book, How to Tell Stories to Children, says, "Perhaps never, since the really old days, has story-telling so nearly reached a recognized level of dignity as a legitimate and general art of entertainment as now." And, in the guise of entertainment, the... more...

WITH TWENTY-THREE ILLUSTRATIONS Sit still, will you? I never saw such a boy: wriggling about like a young eel." "I can't help it, David," said the little fellow so roughly spoken to by a sour-looking serving man; "the horse does jog so, and it's so slippery. If I didn't keep moving I should go off." "You'll soon go off if you don't keep a little... more...

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe / born at Francfort on the Main, August 28, 1749 / died at Weimar, March 22, 1832 / Painting by Karl Joseph Stieler in the New Pinacothek, Munich / Photograph by Piloty and Löhle, Munich   The Poet’s Room in the castle at Weimar / Bust of Frederick von Schiller on the right / Photograph by Louis Held, Weimar   Picturesque spot in Frankfort on the Main / Saalgasse (Saal... more...

A LETTER TO THE CHILDREN Dear Children:—You will like to know that the man who wrote these true stories is himself one of the people he describes so pleasantly and so lovingly for you. He hopes that when you have finished this book, the Indians will seem to you very real and very friendly. He is not willing that all your knowledge of the race that formerly possessed this continent should come from... more...

CHAPTER I Some Old Friends Since these Reminiscences are really what they profess to be, random and informal, I hope I may be pardoned for setting down so many small things. In looking back over my life, the impressions which come most vividly to my mind are mental pictures of my old associates. In speaking of these friends in this chapter, I would not have it thought that many others, of whom I have... more...

A popular and fairly orthodox opinion concerning book-collectors is that their vices are many, their virtues of a negative sort, and their ways altogether past finding out. Yet the most hostile critic is bound to admit that the fraternity of bibliophiles is eminently picturesque. If their doings are inscrutable, they are also romantic; if their vices are numerous, the heinousness of those vices is... more...

CHAPTER 1 If you were asked, "What did Columbus discover in 1492?" you would have but one answer. But what he discovered on his second voyage is not quite so easy to say. He was looking for gold when he landed on the island of Hayti on that second trip. So his eyes were blind to the importance of a simple game which he saw being played with a ball that bounced by some half-naked Indian boys on... more...

I HAVE selected to-night the particular subject of Yeast for two reasons—or, rather, I should say for three. In the first place, because it is one of the simplest and the most familiar objects with which we are acquainted. In the second place, because the facts and phenomena which I have to describe are so simple that it is possible to put them before you without the help of any of those pictures or... more...

CHAPTER I ASPIRATIONS AND FOUNDATIONS I think I see, as it were above the hill-tops of time, the glimmerings of the dawn of a better and a nobler day for the country and the people that I love so well.—JOHN BRIGHT. The suggestion has been made to me that in these days of rapid development, when proposals, so bewildering in their extent, for change and for reconstruction are being made, it would be... more...

PREFACE In these lectures an attempt is made, not so much to restate familiar facts, as to accommodate them to new and supplementary evidence which has been published in America since the outbreak of the war. But even without the excuse of recent discovery, no apology would be needed for any comparison or contrast of Hebrew tradition with the mythological and legendary beliefs of Babylon and Egypt.... more...