THE GAWK I see you now, my fine fellow, as large as life, with your yellow hair cropped very short, except in the neck, where a long tail remains as if you had cut yourself after the pattern of a plough-horse. You are staring straight at me with your broad visage, your great blue goggle eyes, and your mouth which is never shut. Do you remember the morning we met in the hollow where the new houses stand... more...

ESSAY I. Of the truths with which political economy has been enriched by Mr. Ricardo, none has contributed more to give to that branch of knowledge the comparatively precise and scientific character which it at present bears, than the more accurate analysis which he performed of the nature of the advantage which nations derive from a mutual interchange of their productions. Previously to his time, the... more...

CHAPTER I.MATT HIRES OUT. It was a raw, cold day in early April. Since morning, the clouds had been gathering, and they now hung, dark and heavy, over both land and sea. The wind, too, which had been steadily increasing for hours in violence, now blew little short of a gale. It evidently was going to be a terrible night, and that night was nearly at hand. No one realized this more than the boy who,... more...

WITHIN AND WITHOUT PART I.   Go thou into thy closet; shut thy door;  And pray to Him in secret: He will hear.  But think not thou, by one wild bound, to clear  The numberless ascensions, more and more,  Of starry stairs that must be climbed, before  Thou comest to the Father's likeness near,  And bendest down to kiss the feet so dear  That, step by step, their mounting flights... more...

The poems of Homer differ from all other known poetry in this, that they constitute in themselves an encyclopædia of life and knowledge at a time when knowledge, indeed, such as lies beyond the bounds of actual experience, was extremely limited, but when life was singularly fresh, vivid, and expansive. The only poems of Homer we possess are the "Iliad" and the "Odyssey," for the... more...

INTRODUCTION It is now one hundred years since Richard Wagner was born, thirty since he died. In every land he has his monument in one shape or another; his music-dramas can be heard all the world over; all the ancient controversies as to their merits or demerits have died down. The Bayreuth theatre, the outward and visible sign of his inner greatness, has risen to the point of its most splendid glory... more...

INTRODUCTION. Joseph Butler was born in 1692, youngest of eight children of a linendraper at Wantage, in Berkshire.  His father was a Presbyterian, and after education at the Wantage Free Grammar School Joseph Butler was sent to be educated for the Presbyterian ministry in a training academy at Gloucester, which was afterwards removed to Tewkesbury.  There he had a friend and comrade, Secker, who... more...

PREFACE My dear Boys:—The sea stretches away from the land,—a vast sheet of unknown possibilities. Now gray, now blue, now slate colored, whipped into a thousand windrows by the storm, churned into a seething mass of frothing spume and careening bubbles, it pleases, lulls, then terrorizes and dismays. Perpetually intervening as a barrier between peoples and their countries, the wild, sobbing ocean... more...

CHAPTER I. It was either very careless or very astute of Nature to leave the entire length of the American continent without a central passage from ocean to ocean, or, having provided such a passage at Nicaragua, to allow it to be obstructed again by volcanic action. This imperviousness of the long American barrier had, as we shall see, important economic and political results, and the eventual opening... more...

CHAPTER I THE GET TOGETHER. The late September day waved back at Summer graceful as a child saying goodbye with a soft dimply hand; and just as fitful were the gleams of warm sunshine that lazed through the stately trees on the broad campus of Wellington College. It was a brave day—Summer defying Nature, swishing her silken skirts of transparent iridescence into the leaves already trembling before... more...