General Books

COUPON BONDS. PART I. On a certain mild March evening, A. D. 1864, the Ducklow kitchen had a general air of waiting for somebody. Mrs. Ducklow sat knitting by the light of a kerosene lamp, but paused ever and anon, neglecting her stocking, and knitting her brows instead, with an aspect of anxious listening. The old gray cat, coiled up on a cushion at her side, purring in her sleep, purred and slept as... more...

SAINTS WHO HAVE HAD BODIES. All doubtless remember the story which is told of the witty Charles II. and the Royal Society: How one day the King brought to the attention of its members a most curious and inexplicable phenomenon, which he stated thus: "When you put a trout into a pail full of water, why does not the water overflow?" The savans, naturally enough, were surprised, and suggested many... more...

WHY THE PUTKAMMER CASTLE WAS DESTROYED. There is a test of truth in popular creeds and in human opinions generally which is prominently put forward by Herbert Spencer, and has been more or less distinctly stated by other writers, long before our time,—a very searching and trustworthy test. It is, in substance, this:—Whatever doctrine or opinion has received, throughout a long succession of... more...

CHAPTER I "Then I say, once for all, that priest shall never darken my doors again." "Then I say they are my doors, and not yours, and that holy man shall brighten them whenever he will." The gentleman and lady, who faced each other pale and furious, and interchanged this bitter defiance, were man and wife, and had loved each other well. Miss Catharine Peyton was a young lady of ancient... more...

ENGLISH OPINION ON THE AMERICAN WAR. The great events which took place in the United States between the first election of President Lincoln and the accession of President Johnson excited an amount of party-spirit in England greater than I recollect in connection with any other non-English occurrences, and fairly proportionate even to that supreme form of party-spirit which the same events produced in... more...

III. Maine, Thursday, July 20, 1837.—A drive, yesterday afternoon, to a pond in the vicinity of Augusta, about nine miles off, to fish for white perch. Remarkables: the steering of the boat through the crooked, labyrinthine brook, into the open pond,—the man who acted as pilot,—his talking with B——about politics, the bank, the iron money of "a king who came to reign, in Greece, over a... more...

LAST DAYS OF WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR. PART I. When, in October, 1864, the European steamer brought us the intelligence of Walter Savage Landor's death, which occurred the month previous at Florence, newspaper readers asked, "Who is Landor?" The few who remember him remotely through the medium of Mr. Hillard's selections from his writings exclaimed, "What! Did he not die long... more...

THE HARMONISTS. My brother Josiah I call a successful man,—very successful, though only an attorney in a manufacturing town. But he fixed his goal, and reached it. He belongs to the ruling class,—men with slow, measuring eyes and bull-dog jaws,—men who know their own capacity to an atom's weight, and who go through life with moderate, inflexible, unrepenting steps. He looks askance at me... more...

CHAPTER I. "This is the seventy-fifth pair! Pretty well for us in so short a time!" said the Colonel's wife. "Yes, but we must give Aunt Marian the credit of a very large proportion; at least ten pairs have come from her." "I have nothing to do but to knit; none to knit for at home but my cat," I replied, rather shortly, to the soft voice that had given me credit for such... more...

Salem, June 15, 1835.—A walk down to the Juniper. The shore of the coves strewn with bunches of sea-weed, driven in by recent winds. Eel-grass, rolled and bundled up, and entangled with it,—large marine vegetables, of an olive color, with round, slender, snake-like stalks, four or five feet long, and nearly two feet broad: these are the herbage of the deep sea. Shoals of fishes, at a little... more...