CHAPTER I THE WILDERNESS TRAVELERThe First QualificationMANY people have asked me what, all things considered, is the most valuable quality a wilderness traveler can possess. Always I have replied unhesitatingly; for no matter how useful or desirable such attributes as patience, courage, strength, endurance, good nature, and ingenuity, may prove to be, undoubtedly a man with them but without the sense... more...

Introduction.   Canada was originally the French colony of New France, which comprised the range of territory as far west as the Mississippi, including the Great Lakes. After the war of independence it was confined to what are now the provinces of Quebec and Ontario—then known as Upper and Lower Canada. At the confederation (1867) it included only these two provinces, with New Brunswick and Nova... more...

THE BEST PORTRAITS IN ENGRAVING. Engraving is one of the fine arts, and in this beautiful family has been the especial handmaiden of painting. Another sister is now coming forward to join this service, lending to it the charm of color. If, in our day, the "chromo" can do more than engraving, it cannot impair the value of the early masters. With them there is no rivalry or competition.... more...

CHAPTER I ON WAGNER CRITICISM A new work on Wagner requires some justification. It might be urged that, since the Meister has been dead for some decades and the violence of party feeling may be assumed to have somewhat abated, we are now in a position to form a sober estimate of his work, to review his aims, and judge of his measure of success. Such, however, is not my purpose in the following pages. I... more...

INTRODUCTORY. IT is about twenty-five years since, at my earnest desire, my father began to write some of the memories of his own life, of the friends whom he loved, and of the noteworthy people he had known; and it is by the help of these autobiographical papers, and of selections from his letters, that I am enabled to attempt a memoir of him. I should like to remind the elder generation and inform... more...

I MATTER AND ITS ORIGIN I When we were told by a prominent scientist just the other day that "electricity is now known to be molecular in structure," it almost took our breath away. And when we were informed that certain well-known chemical elements had been detected in the very act of being changed over into other well-known elements, with the prospect of such a transformation of the elements... more...

THE SABBATH. FIRST QUESTION IS, WHEN WAS THE SABBATH INSTITUTED? Those who are in the habit of reading the Scriptures just as they find them, and of understanding them according to the established rules of interpretation, will never be at a loss to understand so plain a passage as the following: "And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it; because that in it he had rested from all his work... more...

CHAP. 1. A generall description and division of Geography. Topographie is a particular description of some small quantity of Land, such as Land measurers sett out in their plots. Chorographie is a particular description of some Country, as of England, France, or any shire or prouince in them: as in the vsuall and ordinary mappe. Geography is an art or science teaching vs the generall description of the... more...

CHAPTER I. Chopin—Style and Improvements—The Adagio of the Second Concerto—Funeral March—Psychological Character of the Compositions of Chopin, &c., &c. Deeply regretted as he may be by the whole body of artists, lamented by all who have ever known him, we must still be permitted to doubt if the time has even yet arrived in which he, whose loss is so peculiarly deplored by ourselves,... more...

INTRODUCTION. This collection of epitaphs was started in a very modest fashion about thirty-five years ago, when the compiler found great pleasure in searching all the graveyards near her Vermont home for quaint inscriptions upon old tombstones. It was neither a morbid curiosity nor a spirit of melancholy that attracted her to the weather-beaten slabs of marble and slate, but rather a fondness for... more...