DE AMICITIA. The De Amicitia, inscribed, like the De Senectute, to Atticus, was probably written early in the year 44 B.C., during Cicero's retirement, after the death of Julius Caesar and before the conflict with Antony. The subject had been a favorite one with Greek philosophers, from whom Cicero always borrowed largely, or rather, whose materials he made fairly his own by the skill, richness,... more...

CHAPTER I. THE EARLIER PEOPLE. A PATRIARCH'S STORY.This is the City of Winnipeg. Its growth has been wonderful. It is the highwater mark of Canadian enterprise. Its chief thoroughfare, with asphalt pavement, as it runs southward and approaches the Assiniboine River, has a broad street diverging at right angles from it to the West. This is Broadway, a most commodious avenue with four boulevards... more...

PREFACE. PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. If I had chosen to introduce myself to the greatest possible advantage to the reader, in this Preface to a Second Edition of the "Bibliographical, Antiquarian, and Picturesque Tour," I could not have done better than have borrowed the language of those Foreigners, who, by a translation of the Work (however occasionally vituperative their criticisms) have,... more...

CHAPTER I DARKNESS There was a house in this town where always by night lights burned. In one of its rooms many lights burned; in each of the other rooms at least one light. It stood on Clay Street, on a treeless plot among flower beds, a small dull-looking house; and when late on dark nights all the other houses on Clay Street were solid blockings lifting from the lesser blackness of their background,... more...

FOREWORD Piracy embodies the romance of the sea at its highest expression. It is a sad but inevitable commentary on our civilization, that, so far as the sea is concerned, it has developed from its infancy down to a century or so ago, under one phase or another of piracy. If men were savages on land they were doubly so at sea, and all the years of maritime adventure—years that added to the map of the... more...

ACT I. A Room tastefully filled with cheap Art-furniture. Gimcracks in an étagère; a festoon of chenille monkeys hanging from the gaselier. Japanese fans, skeletons, cotton-wool spiders, frogs, and lizards, scattered everywhere about. Drain-pipes with tall dyed grasses. A porcelain stove decorated with transferable pictures. Showily-bound books in book-case. Window. The Visitors' bell rings in... more...

Mr John Dempster. “What would I do, sir? Why, if I were as poor as you say you are, and couldn’t get on here, I’d go abroad.” “But where, sir? where to?” “Anywhere. Don’t ask me. The world’s big enough and round enough for you, isn’t it?” “But without means, Mr Dempster?” “Yes, sir, without means. Work, sir—work. The same as I have done. I pay my poor rate, and I can’t... more...

Except for those who, under compulsion of a sick certificate, are flying Bombaywards, it is good for every man to see some little of the great Indian Empire and the strange folk who move about it. It is good to escape for a time from the House of Rimmon—be it office or cutchery—and to go abroad under no more exacting master than personal inclination, and with no more definite plan of travel than... more...

MY DEAR READER, Rightly understood, the two points of view, as regards Religion, of the brothers, Cardinal Newman and Francis Newman, which most separated them, would, together, have approached the realization of a great conception. For the Cardinal, Authority was the sine quâ non without which there could be no real faith. Authority was the pilot, without whose steering he could not feel secure in... more...

PREFACE. The general tendency of recent scientific literature dealing with the problem of organic evolution may fairly be characterized as distinctly and prevailingly unfavorable to the Darwinian theory of Natural Selection. In the series of chapters herewith offered for the first time to English readers, Dr. Dennert has brought together testimonies which leave no room for doubt about the decadence of... more...