The Last of a Schoolboy. Edwin Clayhanger stood on the steep-sloping, red-bricked canal bridge, in the valley between Bursley and its suburb Hillport. In that neighbourhood the Knype and Mersey canal formed the western boundary of the industrialism of the Five Towns. To the east rose pitheads, chimneys, and kilns, tier above tier, dim in their own mists. To the west, Hillport Fields, grimed but... more...

CHAPTER I THE EARLY LITERATURE One Sunday morning, about the year 1661, a group of Indians was gathered around a noble-looking man, listening to a story he was reading. It was summer and the day was beautiful, and the little Indian children who sat listening were so interested that not even the thought of their favorite haunts by brookside or meadow could tempt them from the spot. The story was about... more...

PART FIRST. THE BONFIRE OF ST. JOHN. Early in the century, on a summer evening, Jean Lozier stood on the bluff looking at Kaskaskia. He loved it with the homesick longing of one who is born for towns and condemned to the fields. Moses looking into the promised land had such visions and ideals as this old lad cherished. Jean was old in feeling, though not yet out of his teens. The training-masters of... more...

CHAPTER I. MY BIRTHPLACE AND ANCESTRY. The town of Marshalltown, the county seat of Marshall County, in the great State of Iowa, is now a handsome and flourishing place of some thirteen or fourteen thousand inhabitants. I have not had time recently to take the census myself, and so I cannot be expected to certify exactly as to how many men, women and children are contained within the corporate limits.... more...

CHAPTER I THE ONONDAGA Tayoga, of the Clan of the Bear, of the nation Onondaga, of the great League of the Hodenosaunee, advanced with utmost caution through a forest, so thick with undergrowth that it hid all objects twenty yards away. He was not armed with a rifle, but carried instead a heavy bow, while a quiver full of arrows hung over his shoulder. He wore less clothing than when he was in the... more...

Friend, for the sake of loves we hold in common,The love of books, of paintings, rhyme and fiction;And for the sake of that divine affliction,The love of art, passing the love of woman;—By which all life's made nobler, superhuman,Lifting the soul above, and, without frictionOf Time, that puts failure in his prediction,—Works to some end through hearts that dreams illumine:To you I pour this Cup... more...

CHAPTER I. It was evening—evening in Oxford. There are evenings in other places occasionally. Cambridge sometimes puts forward weak imitations. But, on the whole, there are no evenings which have so much of the true, inward, mystic spirit as Oxford evenings. A solemn hush broods over the grey quadrangles, and this, too, in spite of the happy laughter of the undergraduates playing touch last on the... more...

CHAPTER I. "GATHERING CLOUDS." The London season had not yet reached its height, some years ago, before the arch admitting to Constitution Hill had been swept back to make room for the huge, ever-increasing stream of traffic, or the plebeian 'bus had been permitted to penetrate the precincts of Hamilton Place. It was the forenoon of a splendid day, one of the earliest of June, and at that... more...

THE IDEAL TENDENCY. We are all interested in Art; yet few of us have taken pains to justify the delight we feel in it. No philosophy can win us away from Shakspeare, Plato, Angelo, Beethoven, Goethe, Phidias,—from the masters of sculpture, painting, music, and metaphor. Their truth is larger than any other,—too large to be stated directly and lodged in systems, theories, definitions, or formulas.... more...

CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTORY. Our neighbours on the other side of the English Channel have been accused of calling us a “nation of shopkeepers.” No doubt the definition is not bad; and, so long as the goods supplied bear the hall-mark of British integrity, there is nothing to be ashamed of in the appellation; still, with all due deference, I think we might more appropriately be called a nation of... more...