Excerpt: Lady Susan Vernon to Mr. Vernon. My Dear Brother,--I can no longer refuse myself the pleasure of profiting by your kind invitation when we last parted of spending some weeks with you at Churchhill, and, therefore, if quite convenient to you and Mrs. Vernon to receive me at present, I shall hope within a few days to be introduced to a sister whom I have so long desired to be acquainted with. My kind friends here are most affectionately urgent with me to prolong my stay, but their hospitable and cheerful dispositions lead them too much into society for my present situation and state of mind; and I impatiently look forward to the hour when I shall be admitted into Your delightful retirement....

Excerpt: ?The Fall of the House of Usher? by Edgar Allan Poe.

Excerpt: Chapter 1. Joe Brownlow?s Fancy. The lady said, ?An orphan?s fate Is sad and hard to bear.? --Scott ?MOTHER, you could do a great kindness.? ?Well, Joe?? ?If you would have the little teacher at the Miss Heath?s here for the holidays. After all the rest, she has had the measles last and worst, and they don?t know what to do with her, for she came from the asylum for officers? daughters, and has no home at all, and they must go away to have the house purified. They can?t take her with them, for their sister has children, and she will have to roam from room to room before the whitewashers, which is not what I should wish in the critical state of chest left by measles.?...

Preface: It is sometimes treated as an impertinence to revive the personages of one story in another, even though it is after the example of Shakespeare, who revived Falstaff, after his death, at the behest of Queen Elizabeth. This precedent is, however, a true impertinence in calling on the very great to justify the very small!...

Excerpt: Mr. President and Gentlemen of the convention:-- If we could first know where we are, and whither we are tending, we could better judge what to do, and how to do it. We are now far into the fifth year since a policy was initiated with the avowed object and confident promise of putting an end to slavery agitation. Under the operation of that policy, that agitation has not only not ceased, but has constantly augmented. In my opinion, it will not cease until a crisis shall have been reached and passed. ?A house divided against itself cannot stand.? I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved; I do not expect the house to fall; but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing....

Contents SPEECH AT SPRINGFIELD, JUNE 17, 1858 ............................................................................................................ 4 SPEECH AT CHICAGO, JULY 10, 1858. .................................................................................................................. 12 IN REPLY TO SENATOR DOUGLAS ...................................................................................................................... 12 SPEECH AT SPRINGFIELD, JULY 17, 1858. .......................................................................................................... 30 CORRESPONDENCE BETWEEN ........................................................................................................................... 48 LINCOLN AND DOUGLAS ..................................................................................................................................... 48 FIRST JOINT DEBATE, AT OTTAWA, AUGUST 21, 1858 ..................................................................................... 50 SECOND JOINT DEBATE, AT FREEPORT, AUGUST 27, 1858 .....................................................

Excerpt: Sons and Lovers by D. H. Lawrence.

Contents PART ONE........................................................................................................................................ 4 CHAPTER I THE EARLY MARRIED LIFE OF THE MORELS ............................................................................ 4 CHAPTER II THE BIRTH OF PAUL, AND ANOTHER BATTLE......................................................................... 31 CHAPTER III THE CASTING OFF OF MOREL?THE TAKING ON OF WILLIAM ....................................... 51 CHAPTER IV THE YOUNG LIFE OF PAUL............................................................................................................ 64 CHAPTER V PAUL LAUNCHES INTO LIFE .......................................................................................................... 91 CHAPTER VI DEATH IN THE FAMILY................................................................................................................ 123 PART TWO................................................................................................................................... 153 CHAPTER VII LAD-AND-GIRL LOVE................................

Excerpt: Preface By Way Of Criticism. These studies are collected from the monthly press. One appeared in the New Quarterly, one in MacMillan?s, and the rest in the Cornhill Magazine. To the Cornhill I owe a double debt of thanks; first, that I was received there in the very best society, and under the eye of the very best of editors; and second, that the proprietors have allowed me to republish so considerable an amount of copy....

Contents PREFACE BY WAY OF CRITICISM. ........................................................................................... 4 CHAPTER I ? VICTOR HUGO?S ROMANCES ........................................................................ 15 CHAPTER II ? SOME ASPECTS OF ROBERT BURNS.......................................................... 34 CHAPTER III ? WALT WHITMAN............................................................................................. 63 CHAPTER IV ? HENRY DAVID THOREAU: HIS CHARACTER AND OPINIONS........... 84 CHAPTER V ? YOSHIDA-TORAJIRO..................................................................................... 107 CHAPTER VI ? FRANCOIS VILLON, STUDENT, POET, AND HOUSEBREAKER.........117 CHAPTER VII ? CHARLES OF ORLEANS ............................................................................ 141 CHAPTER VIII ? SAMUEL PEPYS .......................................................................................... 170 CHAPTER IX ? JOHN KNOX AND HIS RELATIONS TO WOMEN .................................. 190...

Excerpt: Chapter 1. The Foreigner At Home. ?This is no my ain house; I ken by the biggin? o?t.? Two recent books* one by Mr. Grant White on England, one on France by the diabolically clever Mr. Hillebrand, may well have set people thinking on the divisions of races and nations. Such thoughts should arise with particular congruity and force to inhabitants of that United Kingdom, peopled from so many different stocks, babbling so many different dialects, and offering in its extent such singular contrasts, from the busiest over-population to the unkindliest desert, from the Black Country to the Moor of Rannoch. It is not only when we cross the seas that we go abroad; there are foreign parts of England; and the race that has conquered so wide an empire has not yet managed to assimilate the islands whence she sprang. Ireland, Wales, and the Scottish mountains still cling, in part, to their old Gaelic speech. It was but the other day that English triumphed in Cornwall, and they still show in Mousehole, on St. Michael?s Bay, the house of the last Cornish-speaking woman. English itself, which will now frank the traveller through the most of...

Contents CHAPTER I: THE FOREIGNER AT HOME ..................................................................................... 5 CHAPTER II: SOME COLLEGE MEMORIES................................................................................ 14 CHAPTER III: OLD MORTALITY .................................................................................................. 20 CHAPTER IV: A COLLEGE MAGAZINE ...................................................................................... 28 CHAPTER V: AN OLD SCOTCH GARDENER ............................................................................. 36 CHAPTER VI: PASTORAL .............................................................................................................. 41 CHAPTER VII: THE MANSE .......................................................................................................... 48 CHAPTER VIII: MEMOIRS OF AN ISLET .................................................................................... 53 CHAPTER IX: THOMAS STEVENSON ? CIVIL ENGINEER...................................................... 58 CHAPTER X: TALK AND TALKERS ....................

Introduction: Benjamin Franklin was born in Milk Street, Boston, on January 6, 1706. His father, Josiah Franklin, was a tallow chandler who married twice, and of his seventeen children Benjamin was the youngest son. His schooling ended at ten, and at twelve he was bound apprentice to his brother James, a printer, who published the ?New England Courant.? To this journal he became a contributor, and later was for a time its nominal editor....

Excerpt: Chapter 1. Mrs. Munden had not yet been to my studio on so good a pretext as when she first intimated that it would be quite open to me--should I only care, as she called it, to throw the handkerchief--to paint her beautiful sister-in-law. I needn?t go here more than is essential into the question of Mrs. Munden, who would really, by the way, be a story in herself. She has a manner of her own of putting things, and some of those she has put to me--! Her implication was that Lady Beldonald hadn?t only seen and admired certain examples of my work, but had literally been prepossessed in favour of the painter?s ?personality.? Had I been struck with this sketch I might easily have imagined her ladyship was throwing me the handkerchief. ?She hasn?t done,? my visitor said, ?what she ought.?...

Excerpt: Chapter 1. It was in the early days of April; Bernard Longueville had been spending the winter in Rome. He had travelled northward with the consciousness of several social duties that appealed to him from the further side of the Alps, but he was under the charm of the Italian spring, and he made a pretext for lingering....

Preface: This book comes from the reflections and experience of more than forty years spent in court. Aside from the practice of my profession, the topics I have treated are such as have always held my interest and inspired a taste for books that discuss the human machine with its manifestations and the causes of its varied activity. I have endeavored to present the latest scientific thought and investigation bearing upon the question of human conduct. I do not pretend to be an original investigator, nor an authority on biology, psychology or philosophy. I have simply been a student giving the subject such attention as I could during a fairly busy life. No doubt some of the scientific conclusions stated are still debatable and may finally be rejected. The scientific mind holds opinions tentatively and is always ready to reexamine, modify or discard as new evidence comes to light....

Excerpt: Prelude. Who that cares much to know the history of man, and how the mysterious mixture behaves under the varying experiments of Time, has not dwelt, at least briefly, on the life of Saint Theresa, has not smiled with some gentleness at the thought of the little girl walking forth one morning hand-in-hand with her still smaller brother, to go and seek martyrdom in the country of the Moors? Out they toddled from rugged Avila, wide-eyed and helpless-looking as two fawns, but with human hearts, already beating to a national idea; until domestic reality met them in the shape of uncles, and turned them back from their great resolve. That child-pilgrimage was a fit beginning. Theresa?s passionate, ideal nature demanded an epic life: what were many-volumed romances of chivalry and the social conquests of a brilliant girl to her? Her flame quickly burned up that light fuel; and, fed from within, soared after some illimitable satisfaction, some object which would never justify weariness, which would reconcile self-despair with the rapturous consciousness of life beyond self. She found her epos in the reform of a religious order....

Excerpt: The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature by William James.

Contents CONTENTS.................................................................................................................................................................. 4 PREFACE ..................................................................................................................................................................... 9 Lecture I: RELIGION AND NEUROLOGY............................................................................................................. 11 Lecture II: CIRCUMSCRIPTION OF THE TOPIC ................................................................................................ 34 Lecture III: THE REALITY OF THE UNSEEN ....................................................................................................... 58 Lectures IV and V: THE RELIGION OF HEALTHY MINDEDNESS ................................................................... 81 APPENDIX to Lectures IV and V ............................................................................................................................ 125 Lectures VI and VII: THE SICK SOUL ...........................................