Non-Classifiable Books

The custom of giving a piece of silver to an individual in recognition of service or in appreciation of accomplishment probably began as soon as man developed the fashioning of that metal into objects. Such a presentation piece was a tangible and durable form of recognition which could be appreciated, used, displayed, and enjoyed by the recipient. Many of these silver pieces became for succeeding... more...

INTRODUCTION "When I first dabbled in this art, the old distemper call'd Melancholy was exchang'd for Vapours, and afterwards for the Hypp, and at last took up the now current appellation of the Spleen, which it still retains, tho' a learned doctor of the west, in a little tract he hath written, divides the Spleen and Vapours, not only into the Hypp, the Hyppos, and the Hyppocons;... more...

CHAPTER I. The Jubilee Monarch, King George III., and his last name-sake, had succeeded so much that was unsettled in the previous hundred years, that the last half of the 18th Century was a period almost of comparative quiet in home affairs. Abroad were stirring events in abundance in which England played its part, for the century gives, at a rough calculation, 56 years of war to 44 years of peace,... more...

BERNARD SHAW N.B. The Euripidean verses in the second act of Major Barbara are not by me, or even directly by Euripides. They are by Professor Gilbert Murray, whose English version of The Baccha; came into our dramatic literature with all the impulsive power of an original work shortly before Major Barbara was begun. The play, indeed, stands indebted to him in more ways than one. G. B. S. Before... more...

I Facing the Facts While deafness is a serious misfortune, it is neither a sin, nor a disgrace, to be ashamed of. It is a handicap, to be sure, but one to be bravely and cheerfully faced, for it does not destroy the chances for happiness and success. It is cause for neither discouragement nor despair. It will demand patient devotion and courageous effort to overcome the disadvantage, but what mother is... more...

PREFACESince1870-1, when J. E. Austen Leighpublished hisMemoir of Jane Austen, considerable additions have been made to the stock of information available for her biographers. Of these fresh sources of knowledge the set of letters from Jane to Cassandra, edited by Lord Brabourne, has been by far the most important. These letters are invaluable asmémoires pour servir;although they cover only the... more...

CHAPTER I School and Factory When I first met the heroine of this tale, Marie, she was twenty-three years old, yet had lived enough for a woman of more than twice her age; indeed, few women of any age ever acquire the amount of mental experience possessed by this factory hand and servant girl. She had more completely translated her life into terms of thought than any other woman of my acquaintance. She... more...

INTRODUCTION "Kings are thy nursing fathers and their queens thy nursing mothers." From the reign of Edward the Confessor, the last sovereign of the royal Saxon race, till the death of Elizabeth, the last Tudor queen, these words of the old Hebrew prophet were literally applicable to the great West Minster. When Edward knelt within the Benedictine chapel on Thorneye, which had so miraculously... more...

CHAPTER I. Origin.—The native country of the Peanut (Arachis hypogæa) is not definitely ascertained. Like many other extensively cultivated plants, it has not been found in a truly wild state. Some botanists regard the plant as a native of Africa, and brought to the New World soon after its discovery. Sloane, in his history of Jamaica, states that peanuts formed a part of the provisions taken by the... more...

I. INTRODUCTION: ON TERMS "In the storm we found each other." "In the storm we clung together." These words are found in the opening paragraphs of "Hey! Yellowbacks!" The War Diary of a Conscientious Objector. Ernest L Meyer uses them to describe the psychological process by which a handful of men—a few professors and a lone student—at the University of Wisconsin grew into... more...