Non-Classifiable Books

CHAPTER I. To produce a good balance staff requires more skill than to produce any other turned portion of a watch, and your success will depend not alone on your knowledge of its proper shape and measurements, nor the tools at your command, but rather upon your skill with the graver and your success in hardening and tempering. There are many points worthy of consideration in the making of a balance... more...

INTRODUCTION. It is less than twenty-five years since the first cold Grapery was erected on the Hudson. Since the success of the culture of the delicious varieties of the exotic Grape has been demonstrated, the number of graperies has annually increased, and during the last ten years in a very rapid ratio, until they have become recognized as possible and desirable, among those even whose circumstances... more...

CHAPTER I ENGLISH POETS, FRIENDS AND ENTHUSIASMS To any one casually trying to recall what England has given Robert Browning by way of direct poetical inspiration, it is more than likely that the little poem about Shelley, "Memorabilia" would at once occur: I"Ah, did you once see Shelley plain,And did he stop and speak to youAnd did you speak to him again?How strange it seems and new!... more...

CHAPTER I THE RECOVERERS OF REMBRANDT Imagine a man, a citizen of London, healthy, middle-aged, successful in business, whose interest in golf is as keen, according to his lights and limitations, as the absorption of Rembrandt in art. Suppose this citizen, having one day a loose half-hour of time to fill in the neighbourhood of South Kensington, remembers the articles he has skimmed in the papers about... more...

PREFACE Many attempts have been made by writers on art and poetry to define beauty in the abstract, to express it in the most general terms, to find a universal formula for it. The value of these attempts has most often been in the suggestive and penetrating things said by the way. Such discussions help us very little to enjoy what has been well done in art or poetry, to discriminate between what is... more...

INTRODUCTION None of the minor incidents in our naval history has inspired so many writers as the Mutiny of the Bounty. Histories, biographies and romances, from Bligh's narrative in 1790 to Mr. Becke's "Mutineers" in 1898, have been founded upon it; Byron took it for the theme of the least happy of his dramatic poems; and all these, not because the mutiny left any mark upon history,... more...

PREFACE My dear Boys:—The sea stretches away from the land,—a vast sheet of unknown possibilities. Now gray, now blue, now slate colored, whipped into a thousand windrows by the storm, churned into a seething mass of frothing spume and careening bubbles, it pleases, lulls, then terrorizes and dismays. Perpetually intervening as a barrier between peoples and their countries, the wild, sobbing ocean... more...

The object of this little work is to assist those who may occasionally be called upon to form an opinion as to the genuineness of signatures, alterations in cheques, and the varied doubtful documents that demand the serious consideration of business men by way of a preliminary to "taking further steps." It is the first attempt published in England to explain the principles upon which the... more...

Mr. Beck, who is one of the leaders of the New York Bar, is the author of the most widely read article written since the war began, entitled: "The Dual Alliance v. The Triple Entente," which was subsequently expanded into a book, called "The Evidence in the Case," pronounced by a distinguished publicist to be "the classic of the war." After its publication in The New York Times... more...

CHAPTER I. EARLY LIFE. The life of Francis Bacon is one which it is a pain to write or to read. It is the life of a man endowed with as rare a combination of noble gifts as ever was bestowed on a human intellect; the life of one with whom the whole purpose of living and of every day's work was to do great things to enlighten and elevate his race, to enrich it with new powers, to lay up in store... more...