Non-Classifiable Books

The History Rugs, in the house beautiful, impart richness and represent refinement. Their manufacture was one of the earliest incentives for the blending of colors in such harmony as to please the eye and satisfy the mind; consequently, it is one of the most important of the industrial arts. Since the days when ancient peoples first lay down to sleep wrapped in the skins of animals, the human... more...

What is America? I have never managed to lose my old conviction that travel narrows the mind. At least a man must make a double effort of moral humility and imaginative energy to prevent it from narrowing his mind. Indeed there is something touching and even tragic about the thought of the thoughtless tourist, who might have stayed at home loving Laplanders, embracing Chinamen, and clasping Patagonians... more...

Borrow had at last found work that was thoroughly congenial to him. It was not in his nature to exist outside his occupations, and his whole personality became bound up in the mission upon which he was engaged. Not content with preparing the way for printing the New Testament in Manchu, he set himself the problem of how it was to be distributed when printed. He foresaw serious obstacles to its... more...

PREFACE Tales of the Tokugawa can well be introduced by two "wonder-stories" of Nippon. One of these, the Yotsuya Kwaidan, is presented in the present volume, not so much because of the incidents involved and the peculiar relation to a phase of Nipponese mentality, as from the fact that it contains all the machinery of the Nipponese ghost story. From this point of view the reading of one of... more...

"Strive; for the grasp of the destroyer is upon you, and if you be not wrenched away, it will palsy you and crush you. Strive for the foe has seized upon your vitals: he holds possession of your Fort and renders your will a thing to be controled instead of a controling power. It chains the intellect and bids defiance to your better judgment. Strive like one who knows he has grappled with Death and... more...

WEST AND NORTH OF CHARING CROSS Beginning at the extreme westerly limit of St. Martin's-in-the-Fields, on the south side of Hyde Park Corner, we find ourselves in the Green Park. This is a triangular piece of ground, which was formerly called Little or Upper St. James's Park. It has not much history. In 1642 fortifications were erected on Constitution Hill, and at the end of the seventeenth... more...

INTRODUCTION The impression has always prevailed with me that one who might properly be classed as a genius is not precisely the person best fitted to expound rules and methods for the carrying on of his particular branch of endeavor. I have rather avoided looking the matter up for fear it might not turn out to be so after all. But doesn't it sound as if it ought to be? And isn't a... more...

PREFACE. In New-York, there are a number of Market Houses. Those called Fulton and Washington Markets are the largest. Fulton Market is at the East end of Fulton-street, near the East River, and the Washington Market is on the West end, near the North River. The first was formerly situated in Maiden-lane, on the East River side, and was called Fly Market. The latter was also in Maiden-lane, near... more...

INTRODUCTION. This work takes us back nearly sixty years, to a time when what is now a movement of universal significance was in its infancy. Hegel and the Revolution of 1848; these are the points of departure. To the former, we owe the philosophic form of the socialist doctrine, to the latter, its practical activity as a movement. In the midst of the turmoil and strife and apparent defeat of those... more...

Ralph Waldo Emerson was born at Boston, May 25, 1803. He was of an ancient and honourable English stock, who had transplanted themselves, on one side from Cheshire and Bedfordshire, and on the other from Durham and York, a hundred and seventy years before. For seven or eight generations in a direct and unbroken line his forefathers had been preachers and divines, not without eminence in the Puritan... more...