This little book, written during the last months of peace, goes to press in the first weeks of the great war. Many will feel that in such a time of conflict and horror, when only the most ignorant, disloyal, or apathetic can hope for quietness of mind, a book which deals with that which is called the "contemplative" attitude to existence is wholly out of place. So obvious, indeed, is this point... more...

CHAPTER I. "We met ere yet the world had comeTo wither up the springs of youth,Amid the holy joys of home,And in the first warm blush of youth.We parted as they never part,Whose tears are doomed to be forgot;Oh, by what agony of heart.Forget me not!—forget me not!" —Anonymous. At nine o'clock the next morning Traverse went to the library to keep his tryst with Colonel Le Noir. Seated... more...

CHAPTER I. Subiaco lies beyond Tivoli, southeast from Rome, at the upper end of a wild gorge in the Samnite mountains. It is an archbishopric, and gives a title to a cardinal, which alone would make it a town of importance. It shares with Monte Cassino the honour of having been chosen by Saint Benedict and Saint Scholastica, his sister, as the site of a monastery and a convent; and in a cell in the... more...

CHILD LIFE From the hour when the Puritan baby opened his eyes in bleak New England he had a Spartan struggle for life. In summer-time he fared comparatively well, but in winter the ill-heated houses of the colonists gave to him a most chilling and benumbing welcome. Within the great open fireplace, when fairly scorched in the face by the glowing flames of the roaring wood fire, he might be bathed and... more...

BISMARCK AS A NATIONAL TYPE[1] BY KUNO FRANCKE, PH.D., LL.D., Litt.D. Professor of the History ofGerman Culture, Harvard University. No man since Luther has been a more complete embodiment of German nationality than Otto von Bismarck. None has been closer to the German heart. None has stood more conspicuously for racial aspirations, passions, ideals. It is the purpose of the present sketch to bring out... more...

Chapter I. Introduction. 1. The Study of Physiology. We are now to take up a new study, and in a field quite different from any we have thus far entered. Of all our other studies,--mathematics, physics, history, language,--not one comes home to us with such peculiar interest as does physiology, because this is the study of ourselves. Every thoughtful young person must have asked himself a hundred... more...

In those dim recesses of the consciousness where things have their beginning, if ever things have a beginning, I suppose the origin of this novel may be traced to a fact of a fortnight's sojourn on the western shore of lake Champlain in the summer of 1891. Across the water in the State of Vermont I had constantly before my eyes a majestic mountain form which the earlier French pioneers had named... more...

EARLY YEARS AND SURROUNDINGS Irving's name stands as the first landmark in American letters. No other American writer has won the same sort of recognition abroad or esteem at home as became his early in life. And he has lost very little ground, so far as we can judge by the appeal to figures. The copyright on his works ran out long since, and a great many editions of Irving, cheap and costly,... more...

INTRODUCTION Mr. Kipling’s brilliant reconstruction of the genesis of the ‘Tempest’ may remind us how often that play has excited the creative fancy of its readers. It has given rise to many imitations, adaptations, and sequels. Fletcher copied its storm, its desert island, and its woman who had never seen a man. Suckling borrowed its spirits. Davenant and Dryden added a man who had never seen a... more...

FULLNESS OF PEACE, POWER, AND PLENTY. PRELUDE. The optimist is right. The pessimist is right. The one differs from the other as the light from the dark. Yet both are right. Each is right from his own particular point of view, and this point of view is the determining factor in the life of each. It determines as to whether it is a life of power or of impotence, of peace or of pain, of success or of... more...