| | Author: | Jacobs, William Wyman. | Add | | | Title: | The Monkey's Paw.  | | | | Published: | 1995 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | WITHOUT, the night was cold and wet, but in the small parlor
of
Lakesnam Villa the blinds were drawn and the fire burned
brightly.
Father and son were at chess, the former, who possessed ideas
about
the game involving radical changes, putting his king into such
sharp and unnecessary perils that it even provoked comment from
the
white-haired old lady knitting placidly by the fire. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| | Author: | Jackson, Helen Hunt | Add | | | Title: | Ramona | | | | Published: | 2000 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | IT was sheep-shearing time in Southern California, but sheep-shearing was
late at the Señora Moreno's. The Fates had seemed to combine to put
it off. In the first place, Felipe Moreno had been ill. He was the Señora's
eldest son, and since his father's death had been at the head of his mother's
house. Without him, nothing could be done on the ranch, the Señora
thought. It had been always, "Ask Señor Felipe," "Go to Señor
Felipe," "Señor Felipe will attend to it," ever since Felipe had had
the dawning of a beard on his handsome face. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| | Author: | James, Henry | Add | | | Title: | In the Cage | | | | Published: | 2001 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | It had occurred to her early that in her position--that of a young person
spending, in framed and wired confinement, the life of a guinea-pig or a
magpie--she should know a great many persons without their recognising
the acquaintance. That made it an emotion the more lively--though
singularly rare and always, even then, with opportunity still very much
smothered--to see any one come in whom she knew outside, as she called
it, any one who could add anything to the meanness of her function. Her
function was to sit there with two young men--the other telegraphist and
the counter-clerk;
to mind the "sounder," which was always going, to dole
out stamps and postal-orders, weigh letters, answer stupid questions,
give difficult change and, more than anything else, count words as
numberless as the sands of the sea, the words of the telegrams thrust,
from morning to night, through the gap left in the high lattice, across
the encumbered shelf that her forearm ached with rubbing. This
transparent screen fenced out or fenced in, according to the side of the
narrow counter on which the human lot was cast, the duskiest corner of a
shop pervaded not a little, in winter, by the poison of perpetual gas,
and at all times by the presence of hams, cheese, dried fish, soap,
varnish, paraffin and other solids and fluids that she came to know
perfectly by their smells without consenting to know them by their names. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| | Author: | James, Henry | Add | | | Title: | Glasses | | | | Published: | 2001 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | YES indeed, I say to myself, pen in hand, I can keep hold of the thread
and let it lead me back to the first impression. The little story is all
there, I can touch it from point to point; for the thread, as I call it,
is a row of coloured beads on a string. None of the beads are missing--at
least I think they're not: that's exactly what I shall amuse myself with
finding out. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| | Author: | James, Henry | Add | | | Title: | The Turn of the Screw | | | | Published: | 2000 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | The story had held us, round the fire, sufficiently breathless, but except
the obvious remark that it was gruesome, as, on Christmas Eve in an old house,
a strange tale should essentially be, I remember no comment uttered till
somebody happened to say that it was the only case he had met in which such
a visitation had fallen on a child. The case, I may mention, was that of
an apparition in just such an old house as had gathered us for the occasion—an
appearance, of a dreadful kind, to a little boy sleeping in the room with
his mother and waking her up in the terror of it; waking her not to dissipate
his dread and soothe him to sleep again, but to encounter also, herself,
before she had succeeded in doing so, the same sight that had shaken him.
It was this observation that drew from Douglas—not immediately, but later
in the evening—a reply that had the interesting consequence to which I call
attention. Someone else told a story not particularly effective, which I
saw he was not following. This I took for a sign that he had himself something
to produce and that we should only have to wait. We waited in fact till two
nights later, but that same evening, before we scattered, he brought out
what was in his mind. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| | Author: | Jewett, Sarah Orne | Add | | | Title: | In Dark New England Days | | | | Published: | 1994 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | THE last of the neighbors was going home; officious Mrs. Peter
Downs had lingered late and sought for additional housework with
which to prolong her stay. She had talked incessantly, and
buzzed like a busy bee as she helped to put away the best
crockery after the funeral supper, while the sisters Betsey and
Hannah Knowles grew every moment more forbidding and unwilling to
speak. They lighted a solitary small oil lamp at last as if for
Sunday evening idleness, and put it on the side table in the
kitchen. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| | Author: | Johnston, Mary, 1870-1936. | Add | | | Title: | 1492, | | | | Published: | 1999 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | THE morning was gray and I sat by the sea near Palos
in a gray mood. I was Jayme de Marchena, and that
was a good, old Christian name. But my grandmother
was Jewess, and in corners they said that she never
truly recanted, and I had been much with her as a child.
She was dead, but still they talked of her. Jayme de Marchena,
looking back from the hillside of forty-six, saw some
service done for the Queen and the folk. This thing and
that thing. Not demanding trumpets, but serviceable. It
would be neither counted nor weighed beside and against
that which Don Pedro and the Dominican found to say.
What they found to say they made, not found. They took
clay of misrepresentation, and in the field of falsehood sat
them down, and consulting the parchment of malice, proceeded
to create. But false as was all they set up, the time
would cry it true. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| | Author: | Johnson, Samuel | Add | | | Title: | The Rambler, sections 1-54 (1750); from The Works of Samuel Johnson, in Sixteen Volumes, Volume I | | | | Published: | 1995 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | THE difficulty of the first address on any new
occasion, is felt by every man in his transactions
with the world, and confessed by the settled and
regular forms of salutation which necessity has
introduced into all languages. Judgment was wearied
with the perplexity of being forced upon choice,
where there was no motive to preference; and it was
found convenient that some easy method of introduction
should be established, which, if it wanted
the allurement of novelty, might enjoy the security
of prescription. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| | Author: | Johnston, Sir Harry | Add | | | Title: | Mrs. Warren's Daughter: A Story of the Woman's Movement | | | | Published: | 2001 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | The date when this story begins is a Saturday afternoon in June,
1900, about 3 p.m. The scene is the western room of a suite of
offices on the fifth floor of a house in Chancery Lane, the offices
of Fraser and Warren, Consultant Actuaries and Accountants. There
is a long window facing west, the central part of which is open,
affording a passage out on to a parapet. Through this window, and
still better from the parapet outside, may be seen the picturesque
spires and turrets of the Law Courts, a glimpse here and there of
the mellow, red-brick, white-windowed houses of New Square, the
tree-tops of Lincoln's Inn Fields, and the hint beyond a steepled
and chimneyed horizon of the wooded heights of Highgate. All this
outlook is flooded with the brilliant sunshine of June, scarcely
dimmed by the city smoke and fumes. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| | Author: | Jefferson, Thomas, 1743-1826 | Add | | | Title: | Letter to Angelica Schuyler Church (February 17, 1788) [a machine-readable transcription] | | | | Published: | 1996 | | | | Description: | You speak, Madam, in your Note of Adieu, of civilities which
I never
rendered you. what you kindly call such were but the gra-
-tifications of my own heart: for indeed that was much gratified in
seeing and serving you. The morning, you left us, all was wrong. even
the sun shine was provoking, with which I never quarelled before. I
took it into my head he shone only to throw light on our loss : to pre-
-sent a chearfulness not at all in unison with my mind. I mounted
my horse earlier than common, & took by instinct the road you had
taken. some spirit whispered this to me : but he whispered by
halves only : for, when I turned about at St. Denis, had he told me
you were then broke down at Luzarches, I should certainly have
spurred on to that place, & perhaps not have quitted you till I
had seen the carriage perform it's office fully by deporting you at
Boulogne. I went in the evening to Madame de Corny's, where we
talked over our woes, & this morning I found some solace in going
for Kitty & the girls. she is now here, just triste enough to shew her
affection, & at the same time her discretion. I think I have discovered
a method of preventing this dejection of mind on any future parting. it
is this. when you come again, I will employ myself solely in finding
or fancying that you have some faults, & I will draw a veil over all
your good qualities, if I can find one large enough. I think I shall succeed in
this, for, trying myself to-day, by way of exercise, I recollected immediately one
fault in your composition. it is that you give all your attention to your
Image of manuscript page 2
Image of manuscript page 2
friends, caring nothing about yourself. now you must agree that I chris-
-tian this very mildly when I call it a folly only. and I dare say I shall
find many like it when I examine you with more sang froid.
I remember you told me, when we parted, you would come to see me at
Monticello. now tho' I believe this to be impossible, I have been planning
what I would shew you : a flower here, a tree there; yonder a grove,
near it a fountain; on this side a hill, on that a river. indeed, madam,
I know nothing so charming as our own country. the learned say it is
a new creation; and I believe them; not for their reasons, but because
it is made on an improved plan. Europe is a first idea, a
crude pro-
-duction, before the maker knew his trade, or had made up his mind
as to what he wanted. let us go back to it together then . you intend
it a visit, so do I. while you are indulging with your friends on the
Hudson, I will go to see if Monticello remains in the same place
or I will attend you to the falls of Niagara, if you will go on with me
to the passage of the Patowmac, the Natural bridge etc. this done,
we will come back together, you for a long, & I for a lesser time. Think
of this plan, and when you come to pay your summer's visit to Kitty
we will talk it over. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| | Author: | James, Henry | Add | | | Title: | The Aspern Papers | | | | Published: | 1994 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | I had taken Mrs. Prest into my confidence; in truth without
her I should have made but little advance, for the fruitful idea in
the whole business dropped from her friendly lips. It was she who
invented the short cut, who severed the Gordian knot. It is not
supposed to be the nature of women to rise as a general thing to
the largest and most liberal view — I mean of a practical scheme;
but it has struck me that they sometimes throw off a bold
conception — such as a man would not have risen to — with singular
serenity. "Simply ask them to take you in on the footing of a
lodger" — I don't think that unaided I should have risen to that.
I was beating about the bush, trying to be ingenious, wondering by
what combination of arts I might become an acquaintance, when she
offered this happy suggestion that the way to become an
acquaintance was first to become an inmate. Her actual knowledge
of the Misses Bordereau was scarcely larger than mine, and indeed
I had brought with me from England some definite facts which were
new to her. Their name had been mixed up ages before with one of
the greatest names
of the century, and they lived now in Venice in
obscurity, on very small means, unvisited, unapproachable, in a
dilapidated old palace on an out-of-the-way canal: this was the
substance of my friend's impression of them. She herself had been
established in Venice for fifteen years and had done a great deal
of good there; but the circle of her benevolence did not include
the two shy, mysterious and, as it was somehow supposed, scarcely
respectable Americans (they were believed to have lost in their
long exile all national quality, besides having had, as their name
implied, some French strain in their origin), who asked no favors
and desired no attention. In the early years of her residence she
had made an attempt to see them, but this had been successful only
as regards the little one, as Mrs. Prest called the niece; though
in reality as I afterward learned she was considerably the bigger
of the two. She had heard Miss Bordereau was ill and had a
suspicion that she was in want; and she had gone to the house to
offer assistance, so that if there were suffering (and American
suffering), she should at least not have it on her conscience. The
"little one" received her in the great cold, tarnished Venetian
sala, the central hall of the house, paved with marble and roofed
with dim crossbeams, and did not even ask her to sit down. This
was not encouraging for me, who wished to sit so fast, and I
remarked as much to Mrs. Prest. She however replied with
profundity, "Ah, but there's all the difference: I went to confer
a favor and you will go to ask one. If they are proud you will be
on the right side." And she offered to show me their house to
begin with — to row me thither in her gondola. I let her know that
I had already been to
look at it half a dozen times; but I accepted
her invitation, for it charmed me to hover about the place. I had
made my way to it the day after my arrival in Venice (it had been
described to me in advance by the friend in England to whom I owed
definite information as to their possession of the papers), and I
had besieged it with my eyes while I considered my plan of
campaign. Jeffrey Aspern had never been in it that I knew of; but
some note of his voice seemed to abide there by a roundabout
implication, a faint reverberation. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| | Author: | James, Henry | Add | | | Title: | Confidence | | | | Published: | 1993 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | 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. He had spent five days at Siena, where he had
intended to spend but two, and still it was impossible to continue his
journey. He was a young man of a contemplative and speculative turn,
and this was his first visit to Italy, so that if he dallied by the way he
should not be harshly judged. He had a fancy for sketching, and it was on
his conscience to take a few pictorial notes. There were two old inns at
Siena, both of them very shabby and very dirty. The one at which
Longueville had taken up his abode was entered by a dark, pestiferous
arch-way, surmounted by a sign which at a distance might have been read
by the travellers as the Dantean injunction to renounce all hope. The other
was not far off, and the day after his arrival, as he passed it, he saw two
ladies going in who evidently belonged to the large fraternity of
Anglo-Saxon tourists, and one of whom was young and carried herself
very well. Longueville had his share — or more than his share — of gallantry,
and this incident awakened a regret. If he had gone to the other inn he
might have had charming company: at his own establishment there was no
one but an æsthetic German who smoked bad tobacco in the
dining-room. He remarked to himself that this was always his luck, and
the remark was characteristic of the man; it was charged with the feeling
of the moment, but it was not absolutely just; it was the result of an acute
impression made by the particular occasion; but it failed in appreciation of
a providence which had sprinkled Longueville's career with happy
accidents — accidents, especially, in which his characteristic gallantry was
not allowed to rust for want of exercise. He lounged, however,
contentedly enough through these bright, still days of a Tuscan April,
drawing much entertainment from the high picturesqueness of the things
about him. Siena, a few years since, was a flawless gift of the Middle Ages to
the modern imagination. No other Italian city could have been
more interesting to an observer fond of reconstructing obsolete manners.
This was a taste of Bernard Longueville's, who had a relish for serious
literature, and at one time had made several lively excursions into
mediæval history. His friends thought him very clever, and at the same
time had an easy feeling about him which was a tribute to his freedom
from pedantry. He was clever indeed, and an excellent companion; but the
real measure of his brilliancy was in the success with which he entertained
himself. He was much addicted to conversing with his own wit, and he
greatly enjoyed his own society. Clever as he often was in talking with his
friends, I am not sure that his best things, as the phrase is, were not for
his own ears. And this was not on account of any cynical contempt for the
understanding of his fellow-creatures: it was simply because what I have
called his own society was more of a stimulus than that of most other
people. And yet he was not for this reason fond of solitude; he was, on
the contrary, a very sociable animal. It must be admitted at the outset that
he had a nature which seemed at several points to contradict itself, as will
probably be perceived in the course of this narration. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| | Author: | James, William | Add | | | Title: | The Varieties of Religious Experience | | | | Published: | 1996 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | IT is with no small amount of trepidation that I take my
place behind this desk, and face this learned audience.
To us Americans, the experience of receiving instruction
from the living voice, as well as from the books, of European
scholars, is very familiar. At my own University of
Harvard, not a winter passes without its harvest, large or
small, of lectures from Scottish, English, French, or German
representatives of the science or literature of their respective
countries whom we have either induced to cross the ocean
to address us, or captured on the wing as they were visiting
our land. It seems the natural thing for us to listen whilst
the Europeans talk. The contrary habit, of talking whilst
the Europeans listen, we have not yet acquired; and in him
who first makes the adventure it begets a certain sense of
apology being due for so presumptuous an act. Particularly
must this be the case on a soil as sacred to the American
imagination as that of Edinburgh. The glories of the philosophic
chair of this university were deeply impressed on my
imagination in boyhood. Professor Fraser's Essays in Philosophy,
then just published, was the first philosophic book I
ever looked into, and I well remember the awestruck feeling
I received from the account of Sir William Hamilton's classroom
therein contained. Hamilton's own lectures were the
first philosophic writings I ever forced myself to study, and
after that I was immersed in Dugald Stewart and Thomas
Brown. Such juvenile emotions of reverence never get outgrown;
and I confess that to find my humble self promoted
from my native wilderness to bc actually for the time an official
here, and transmuted into a colleague of these illustrious
names, carries with it a sense of dreamland quite as
much as of reality. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| | Author: | Jewett, Sarah Orne | Add | | | Title: | A Dunnet Shepherdess | | | | Published: | 1995 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | EARLY one morning at Dunnet Landing, as if it were still
night, I waked, suddenly startled by a spirited conversation
beneath my window. It was not one of Mrs. Todd's morning
soliloquies; she was not addressing her plants and flowers in words
of either praise or blame. Her voice was declamatory though
perfectly good-humored, while the second voice, a man's, was of
lower pitch and somewhat deprecating. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| | Author: | Jewett, Sarah Orne | Add | | | Title: | The Foreigner | | | | Published: | 1995 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | ONE evening, at the end of August, in Dunnet Landing, I heard
Mrs. Todd's firm footstep crossing the small front entry outside my
door, and her conventional cough which served as a herald's
trumpet, or a plain New England knock, in the harmony of our
fellowship. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| | Author: | Jewett, Sarah Orne | Add | | | Title: | The Landscape Chamber | | | | Published: | 1994 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | I was tired of ordinary journeys, which involved either the
loneliness and discomfort of fashionable hotels, or the
responsibilities of a guest in busy houses. One is always doing
the same things over and over; I now promised myself that I would
go in search of new people and new scenes, until I was again ready
to turn with delight to my familiar occupations. So I mounted my
horse one morning, without any definite plan of my journey, and
rode eastward, with a business-like haversack strapped behind the
saddle. I only wished that the first day's well-known length of
road had been already put behind me. One drawback to a woman's
enjoyment of an excursion of this sort is the fact that when she is
out of the saddle she is uncomfortably dressed. But I compromised
matters as nearly as possible by wearing a short corduroy habit,
light both in color and weight, and putting a linen blouse and belt
into my pack, to replace the stiff habit-waist. The wallet on the
saddle held a flat drinking-cup, a bit of chocolate, and a few hard
biscuit, for provision against improbable famine. Autumn would be
the best time for such a journey, if the evenings need not be so
often spent in stuffy rooms, with kerosene lamps for company. This
was early summer, and I had long days in which to amuse myself.
For a book I took a much-beloved small copy of The Sentimental
Journey. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| | Author: | Jewett, Sarah Orne | Add | | | Title: | From A Mournful Villager | | | | Published: | 1995 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | LATELY I have been thinking, with much sorrow, of the
approaching extinction of front yards, and of the type of New
England village character and civilization with which they are
associated. Formerly, because I lived in an old-fashioned New
England village, it would have been hard for me to imagine
that there were parts of the country where the front yard, as I
knew it, was not in fashion, and that grounds (however small) had
taken its place. No matter how large a piece of land lay in front
of a house in old times, it was still a front yard, in spite of
noble dimension and the skill of practiced gardeners. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| | Author: | Jewett, Sarah Orne | Add | | | Title: | The Passing of Sister Barsett | | | | Published: | 1996 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | MRS. MERCY CRANE was of such firm persuasion that a house is
meant to be lived in, that during many years she was never known
to leave her own neat two-storied dwelling place on the Ridge road.
Yet she was very fond of company, and in pleasant weather often
sat in the side doorway looking out on her green yard, where the
grass grew short and thick and was undisfigured even by a path
toward the steps. All her faded green blinds were securely tied
together and knotted on the inside by pieces of white tape; but now
and then, when the sun was not too hot for her carpets, she opened
one window at a time for a few hours, having pronounced views
upon the necessity of light and air. Although Mrs. Crane was
acknowledged by her best friends to be a peculiar person and very
set in her ways, she was much respected, and one acquaintance vied
with another in making up for her melancholy seclusion by bringing
her all the news they could gather. She had been left alone many
years before by the sudden death of her husband from sunstroke,
and though she was by no means poor, she had, as someone said,
"such a pretty way of taking a little present that you couldn't help
being pleased when you gave her anything." | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| | Author: | Jewett, Sarah Orne | Add | | | Title: | The Queen's Twin | | | | Published: | 1996 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | THE coast of Maine was in former years brought so near to
foreign shores by its busy fleet of ships that among the older men
and women one still finds a surprising proportion of travelers.
Each seaward stretching headland with its high-set houses, each
island of a single farm, has sent its spies to view many a land of
Eshcol. One may see plain, contented old faces at the windows,
whose eyes have looked at far-away ports, and known the splendors
of the Eastern world. They shame the easy voyager of the North
Atlantic and the Mediterranean; they have rounded the Cape of Good
Hope and braved the angry seas of Cape Horn in small wooden ships;
they have brought up their hardy boys and girls on narrow decks;
they were among the last of the Northmen's children to go
adventuring to unknown shores. More than this one cannot give to
a young state for its enlightenment. The sea captains and the
captains' wives of Maine knew something of the wide world, and
never mistook their native parishes for the whole instead of a part
thereof; they knew not only Thomaston and Castine and Portland, but
London and Bristol and Bordeaux, and the strange-mannered harbors
of the China Sea. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| | Author: | Jewett, Sarah Orne | Add | | | Title: | Going to Shrewsbury | | | | Published: | 1994 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | THE train stopped at a way station with apparent
unwillingness, and there was barely time for one elderly passenger
to be hurried on board before a sudden jerk threw her almost off
her unsteady old feet and we moved on. At my first glance I saw
only a perturbed old country woman, laden with a large basket and
a heavy bundle tied up in an old-fashioned bundle-handkerchief;
then I discovered that she was a friend of mine, Mrs. Peet, who
lived on a small farm, several miles from the village. She used to
be renowned for good butter and fresh eggs and the earliest cowslip
greens; in fact, she always made the most of her farm's slender
resources; but it was some time since I had seen her drive by from
market in her ancient thorough-braced wagon. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| | Author: | Jewett, Sarah Orne | Add | | | Title: | Tom's Husband | | | | Published: | 1994 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | I SHALL not dwell long upon the circumstances that led to the
marriage of my hero and heroine; though their courtship was, to
them, the only one that has ever noticeably approached the ideal, it
had many aspects in which it was entirely commonplace in other
people's eyes. While the world in general smiles at lovers with kindly
approval and sympathy, it refuses to be aware of the unprecedented
delight which is amazing to the lovers themselves. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| | Author: | Jewett, Sarah Orne | Add | | | Title: | The White Rose Road | | | | Published: | 1995 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | Being a New Englander, it is natural that I should first speak
about the weather. Only the middle of June, the green fields, and
blue sky, and bright sun, with a touch of northern mountain wind
blowing straight toward the sea, could make such a day, and that is
all one can say about it. We were driving seaward through a part
of the country which has been least changed in the last thirty
years,—among farms which have been won from swampy lowland, and
rocky, stump-buttressed hillsides; where the forests wall in the
fields, and send their outposts year by year farther into the
pastures. There is a year or two in the history of these pastures
before they have arrived at the dignity of being called woodland,
and yet are too much shaded and overgrown by young trees to give
proper pasturage, when they make delightful harbors for the small
wild creatures which yet remain, and for wild flowers and berries.
Here you send an astonished rabbit scurrying to his burrow, and
there you startle yourself with a partridge, who seems to get the
best of the encounter. Sometimes you see a hen partridge and her
brood of chickens crossing your path with an air of comfortable
door-yard security. As you drive along the narrow, grassy road,
you see many charming sights and delightful nooks on either hand,
where the young trees spring out of a close-cropped turf that
carpets the ground like velvet. Toward the east and the quaint
fishing village of Ogunquit I find the most delightful woodland
roads. There is little left of the large timber which once filled
the region, but much young growth, and there are hundreds of acres
of cleared land and pasture ground where the forests are springing
fast and covering the country once more, as if they had no idea of
losing in their war with civilization and the intruding white
settler. The pine woods and the Indians seem to be next of kin,
and the former owners of this corner of New England are the only
proper figures to paint into such landscapes. The twilight under
tall pines seems to be untenanted and to lack something, at first
sight, as if one opened the door of an empty house. A farmer
passing through with his axe is but an intruder, and children
straying home from school give one a feeling of solicitude at their
unprotectedness. The pines are the red man's house, and it may be
hazardous even yet for the gray farmhouses to stand so near the
eaves of the forest. I have noticed a distrust of the deep woods,
among elderly people, which was something more than a fear of
losing their way. It was a feeling of defenselessness against some
unrecognized but malicious influence. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| | Author: | Jewett, Sarah Orne | Add | | | Title: | William's Wedding | | | | Published: | 1995 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | THE hurry of life in a large town, the constant putting aside
of preference to yield a most unsatisfactory activity, began to vex
me, and one day I took the train, and only left it for the
eastward-bound boat. Carlyle says somewhere that the only
happiness a man ought to ask for is happiness enough to get his
work done; and against this the complexity and futile ingenuity of
social life seems a conspiracy. But the first salt wind from the
east, the first sight of a lighthouse set boldly on its outer rock,
the flash of a gull, the waiting procession of seaward-bound firs
on an island, made me feel solid and definite again, instead of a
poor, incoherent being. Life was resumed, and anxious living blew
away as if it had not been. I could not breathe deep enough or
long enough. It was a return to happiness. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| | Author: | Johnston, Charles | Add | | | Title: | Count Tolstoy at Home | | | | Published: | 1996 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | WHILE I was reading "What is Art?" it occurred to me that it would
be a very interesting thing if one could get a sense of Tolstoy's
personality, and his surroundings,—something comparable in
vividness and truth to the innumerable portraits in his own books.
The study of a work so sincere, so full of power, so overburdened
even with moral earnestness, and representing, as its author says,
the work and the best thought of fifteen years, brings with it an
almost irresistible curiosity to look through the page to the man
behind it. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| | Author: | Johnson, Lyndon B. | Add | | | Title: | We Shall Overcome | | | | Published: | 1994 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | Mr. Speaker, Mr. President, members of the Congress, I speak
tonight for the dignity of man and the destiny of Democracy. I urge
every member of both parties, Americans of all religions and of all
colors, from every section of this country, to join me in that cause. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| | Author: | Young Joseph | Add | | | Title: | An Indian's Views of Indian Affairs | | | | Published: | 1998 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | I WISH that I had words at command in which to express
adequately the interest with which I have read the extraordinary
narrative which follows, and which I have the privilege of
introducing to the readers of this "Review." I feel, however, that
this apologia is so boldly marked by the charming
naïveté and tender pathos which characterize
the red-man, that it needs no introduction, much less any
authentication; while in its smothered fire, in its deep sense of
eternal righteousness and of present evil, and in its hopeful
longings for the coming of a better time, this Indian chief's appeal
reminds us of one of the old Hebrew prophets of the days of the
captivity. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| | Author: | Jewett, Sarah Orne | Add | | | Title: | In Dark New England Days | | | | Published: | 1994 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | THE last of the neighbors was going home; officious Mrs. Peter
Downs had lingered late and sought for additional housework with
which to prolong her stay. She had talked incessantly, and
buzzed like a busy bee as she helped to put away the best
crockery after the funeral supper, while the sisters Betsey and
Hannah Knowles grew every moment more forbidding and unwilling to
speak. They lighted a solitary small oil lamp at last as if for
Sunday evening idleness, and put it on the side table in the
kitchen. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
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