DANTE. [Jan. 1850.] The Divina Commedia is one of the landmarks of history. More than a magnificent poem, more than the beginning of a language and the opening of a national literature, more than the inspirer of art, and the glory of a great people, it is one of those rare and solemn monuments of the mind's power, which measure and test what it can reach to, which rise up ineffaceably and for ever... more...

CHAPTER I A PRIVATE LESSON FROM A BULLDOG. "Want to be a school-master, do you? You? Well, what would you do in Flat Crick deestrick, I'd like to know? Why, the boys have driv off the last two, and licked the one afore them like blazes. You might teach a summer school, when nothin' but children come. But I 'low it takes a right smart man to be school-master in Flat Crick in the... more...

I do not thinkSo fair an outward, and such stuff within,Endows a man but he. Cymbeline. The Victoria Bank, Toronto, is on the corner of Bay and Front Streets, where it overlooks a part of the harbor large enough to gladden the eyes of the bank-clerks who are aquatic in their habits and have time to look out of the windows. Young gentlemen in tattered and ink-stained coats, but irreproachable in the... more...

LESSON XLVI NEW WORDS.sobathsickpleasetubwrapshawlsis'terNow, Ned, please do not put my kitty into the bath tub. Yes, sister, I must give her a bath. Here is the bath tub with some nice warm water. But, Ned, kitty will get sick if you put her into the water. She will take cold. No, I will wrap her well in the big shawl, and then she can not take cold. So Ned gave kitty a bath, and then put her... more...

CHAPTER I. "There is a courtesy of the heart. Is it akin to love?"—Goethe.. It is the perfection of summer, early June, before the roses have shaken off their sweetness, and Grandon Park is lovely enough to compare with places whose beauty is an accretion of centuries rather than the work of decades. Yet these grand old trees and this bluff, with a strata of rock manifest here and there, are... more...

PART I.—INCIDENCE OF ABORTION IN NEW ZEALAND. All the evidence brought before the Committee indicates that abortion is exceedingly frequent in New Zealand. It is quite impossible to assess the incidence with complete accuracy, for the reason that a very considerable number of these cases do not come under medical or hospital observation, but some definite indication of the frequency is given by the... more...

CHAPTER V. MR. MCLAUGHLIN AND FRIEND. JOHN BUMSTEAD, on his way home along the unsteady turnpike—upon which he is sure there will be a dreadful accident some day, for want of railings—is suddenly brought to an unsettled pause in his career by the spectacle of Old Mortarity leaning against the low fence of the pauper burial-ground, with a shapeless boy throwing stones at him in the moonlight. The... more...

The Blind Spot opens with the words: "Perhaps it were just as well to start at the beginning. A mere matter of news." Suppose I use them in the same sense: A mere matter of news: The first instalment of this fabulous novel was featured in Argosy-All-Story-Weekly for May 14, 1921. Described as a "different" serial, it was introduced by a cover by Modest Stein. In the foreground was the... more...

Chapter 1 Once upon a time and a very good time it was there was a moocow coming down along the road and this moocow that was coming down along the road met a nicens little boy named baby tuckoo... His father told him that story: his father looked at him through a glass: he had a hairy face. He was baby tuckoo. The moocow came down the road where Betty Byrne lived: she sold lemon platt. O, the wild... more...

PREFACE. I propose, in the following pages, to consider the possibilities of a satisfactory intellectual life under various conditions of ordinary human existence. It will form a part of my plan to take into account favorable and unfavorable influences of many kinds; and my chief purpose, so far as any effect upon others may be hoped for, will be to guard some who may read the book alike against the... more...