South America Books

CHAPTER I EARLIEST MEMORIES Preamble—The house where I was born—The singular Ombu tree—A tree without a name—The plain—The ghost of a murdered slave—Our playmate, the old sheep-dog—A first riding-lesson—The cattle: an evening scene—My mother—Captain Scott—The hermit and his awful penance. It was never my intention to write an autobiography. Since I took to writing in my middle... more...

—Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.We spent part of an afternoon and a night at sea, and reached Bluff, in New Zealand, early in the morning. Bluff is at the bottom of the middle island, and is away down south, nearly forty-seven degrees below the equator. It lies as far south of the line as Quebec lies north of it, and the climates of the two should be alike; but for some reason or other it... more...

In the first place God made idiots. This was for practice. Then He made School Boards.—Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.Suppose we applied no more ingenuity to the instruction of deaf and dumb and blind children than we sometimes apply in our American public schools to the instruction of children who are in possession of all their faculties? The result would be that the deaf and dumb and... more...

It is your human environment that makes climate.—Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.Sept. 15—Night. Close to Australia now. Sydney 50 miles distant. That note recalls an experience. The passengers were sent for, to come up in the bow and see a fine sight. It was very dark. One could not follow with the eye the surface of the sea more than fifty yards in any direction it dimmed away and... more...

By trying we can easily learn to endure adversity. Another man's, I mean.—Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.You soon find your long-ago dreams of India rising in a sort of vague and luscious moonlight above the horizon-rim of your opaque consciousness, and softly lighting up a thousand forgotten details which were parts of a vision that had once been vivid to you when you were a boy,... more...

ARGENTINA FROM A BRITISH POINT OF VIEW. Argentina, which does not profess to be a manufacturing country, exported in 1909 material grown on her own lands to the value of £79,000,000, and imported goods to the extent of £60,000,000. This fact arrests our attention, and forces us to recognise that there is a trade balance of nearly 20 millions sterling in her favour, and to realise the saving power of... more...

A man may have no bad habits and have worse.—Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar. The starting point of this lecturing-trip around the world was Paris, where we had been living a year or two. We sailed for America, and there made certain preparations. This took but little time. Two members of my family elected to go with me. Also a carbuncle. The dictionary says a carbuncle is a kind of jewel.... more...

CHAPTER I. We had sailed in a southeasternly direction from New York twelve days when we rounded Cape St. Roque, the easternmost point of South America. A line drawn due north from this point would pass through the Atlantic midway between Europe and America. If we had sailed directly south we should have touched the western instead of the eastern coast, for the reason that practically the entire... more...

INTRODUCTION "Through Five Republics on Horseback" has all the elements of a great missionary book. It is written by an author who is an eye-witness of practically all that he records, and one who by his explorations and travels has won for himself the title of the "Livingstone of South America." The scenes depicted by the writer and the glimpses into the social, political and religious... more...

Let me make the superstitions of a nation and I care not who makes its laws or its songs either.—Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.Yes, the city of Benares is in effect just a big church, a religious hive, whose every cell is a temple, a shrine or a mosque, and whose every conceivable earthly and heavenly good is procurable under one roof, so to speak—a sort of Army and Navy Stores,... more...