| | 102 | Author: | Davis, Rebecca Harding, 1831-1910 | Requires cookie* | | | Title: | Blind Tom  | | | | Published: | 1996 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | SOMETIME in the year 1850, a tobacco-planter in Southern
Georgia (Perry H. Oliver by name) bought a likely negro woman
with some other field-hands. She was stout, tough-muscled,
willing, promised to be a remunerative servant; her baby, however,
a boy a few months old, was only thrown in as a makeweight to the
bargain, or rather because Mr. Oliver would not consent to separate
mother and child. Charity only could have induced him to take the
picaninny, in fact, for he was but a lump of black flesh, born blind,
and with the vacant grin of idiocy, they thought, already stamped on
his face. The two slaves were purchased, I believe, from a trader: it
has been impossible, therefore, for me to ascertain where Tom was
born, or when. Georgia field-hands are not accurate as Jews in
preserving their genealogy; they do not anticipate a Messiah.
A white man, you know, has that vague hope unconsciously latent
in him, that he is, or shall give birth to, the great man of his race, a
helper, a provider for the world's hunger: so he grows jealous with
his blood; the dead grandfather may have presaged the possible son;
besides, it is a debt he owes to this coming Saul to tell him whence
he came. There are some classes, free and slave, out of whom
society has crushed this hope: they have no clan, no family-names
among them, therefore. This idiot-boy, chosen by God to be
anointed with the holy chrism, is only "Tom,"—"Blind Tom," they
call him in all the Southern States, with a kind cadence always,
being proud and fond of him; and yet—nothing but Tom? That is
pitiful. Just a mushroom-growth,—unkinned, unexpected, not hoped
for, for generations, owning no name to purify and honor and give
away when he is dead. His mother, at work to-day in the Oliver
plantations, can never comprehend why her boy is famous; this gift
of God to him means nothing to her. Nothing to him, either, which
is saddest of all; he is unconscious, wears his crown as an idiot
might. Whose fault is that? Deeper than slavery the evil lies. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| 103 | Author: | Davis, Rebecca Harding, 1831-1910 | Requires cookie* | | | Title: | An Old-Time Love Story | | | | Published: | 1996 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | ON the shelves of the libraries of our historical societies are
many privately printed volumes, the histories of American families
whose ancestors settled here in early days. They usually are dull
reading enough, but we sometimes find in them fragments of real
life more strange and tragic than any fiction. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| 106 | Author: | Dunbar, Paul Laurence | Requires cookie* | | | Title: | Mr. Cornelius Johnson, Office-Seeker | | | | Published: | 1996 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | IT was a beautiful day in balmy May and the sun shone pleasantly on
Mr. Cornelius Johnson's very spruce Prince Albert suit of gray as he
alighted from the train in Washington. He cast his eyes about him,
and then gave a sigh of relief and satisfaction as he took his bag
from the porter and started for the gate. As he went along, he looked
with splendid complacency upon the less fortunate mortals who were
streaming out of the day coaches. It was a Pullman sleeper on which
he had come in. Out on the pavement he hailed a cab, and giving the
driver the address of a hotel, stepped in and was rolled away. Be it
said that he had cautiously inquired about the hotel first and found
that he could be accommodated there. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| 107 | Author: | Eastman, Charles Alexander, 1858-1939 | Requires cookie* | | | Title: | The Madness of Bald Eagle | | | | Published: | 1996 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | IT was many years ago, when I was only a child, began White
Ghost, the patriarchal old chief of the Yanktonnais Sioux, that our
band was engaged in a desperate battle with the Rees and Mandans.
The cause of the fight was a peculiar one. I will tell you about it.
And he laid aside his long-stemmed pipe and settled himself to the
recital. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| 108 | Author: | Echols, E. Sherman | Requires cookie* | | | Title: | A New England Literary Colony | | | | Published: | 1996 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | GROUPED together in and about the old New England city of Hartford
are some of the best known literary people in this country. Their
homes form what might almost be called a literary colony, and so close
are their lives that one thinks instinctively of the old saying,
"Birds of a feather flock together." Here are the adjoining homes of
Harriet Beecher Stowe, Samuel L. Clemens (Mark Twain), Charles Dudley
Warner, William E. Gillette, the noted writer and actor of the drama,
Richard Burton, poet and literary critic, and Isabella Beecher Hooker,
philanthropist and writer on sociology. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| 109 | Author: | Far, Sui Sin | Requires cookie* | | | Title: | An Autumn Fan | | | | Published: | 1996 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | FOR two weeks Ming Hoan was a guest in the house of Yen Chow, the
father of Ah Leen, and because love grows very easily between a youth
and a maid it came to pass that Ah Leen unconsciously yielded to Ming
Hoan her heart and Ming Hoan as unconsciously yielded his to her.
After the yielding they became conscious. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| 113 | Author: | Foreman, Grant | Requires cookie* | | | Title: | The Last of the Five Tribes | | | | Published: | 1996 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | THE year 1906 marks the last page in the life history of the five
civilized tribes of Indians. These once powerful tribes have abandoned
their identity and institutions, and have severed the bonds which for
many years have held the individuals together as tribes. Their
condition was not brought about by their own desires; it is but a
melancholy repetition of history—the inevitable result of close
contact of the white man with the red man. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| 114 | Author: | Gill, William Fearing | Requires cookie* | | | Title: | Edgar Allan Poe—After Fifty Years | | | | Published: | 1996 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | WHEN Rufus W. Griswold, "the pedagogue vampire," as he was aptly
termed by one of his contemporaries, committed the immortal infamy
of blighting a collection of Edgar Allan Poe's works, which he
found ready at hand, by supplementing his perfunctory labors with
a calumniating memoir of the poet, nearly fifty years ago, there
were many protests uttered by the poet's contemporaries at home and
abroad. Charles Baudelaire, the Poe of French literature, in his
tribute to the dead poet, indignantly wrote: "What is the matter
with America? Are there, then, no regulations there to keep the
curs out of the cemeteries?" In view of the fact that the Griswold
biography of Poe has been incontestably discredited, and proved to
be merely a scaffolding of malevolent falsehoods—the outcome of
malice and mendacity—the deference paid to Griswold and his
baleful work in the memoir accompanying the latest publication of
Poe's writings seems well-nigh incomprehensible. Professor
Woodberry excuses the detractions of Poe's vilifier, "in view of
the contemporary uncertainty of Poe's fame, the difficulty of
obtaining a publisher, and the fact that the editorial work was not
paid for." Most amazing reasons, indeed, in justification of
Griswold's interposition as the poet's biographer—an office that
had been specially bequeathed by the dying genius to his bosom
friend, Nathaniel P. Willis. Had Willis shirked this
responsibility, there might have been some excuse for Griswold and
his horde of gutter-snipes, who wreaked their venom upon the name
of Poe, outraging every tenet of common decency; but Willis
performed his delegated duty reverently, sympathetically, and
adequately. No publisher with any sense of justice would have
presumed to include any other memoir than that of Willis in the
original edition of Poe's works. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| 118 | Author: | Gorky, Maxim | Requires cookie* | | | Title: | "Confronting Life" | | | | Published: | 1996 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | CONFRONTING Life, two people stood—both discontent. And to the
question, "What do you expect of me?" one made answer with weary
voice: "I am distracted by the cruelty of thy contradictions. Feebly my
reason strives to understand the meaning of existence, and with
perplexing gloom my heart is filled before thee. My consciousness doth
tell me man is the highest of creations." | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| 119 | Author: | Gorky, Maxim | Requires cookie* | | | Title: | Personal Recollections of Anton Pavlovitch Chekhov | | | | Published: | 1996 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | [As a narrative of the visit of the best known of Russian short
story
writers to another regarded as still greater, the following article has an
especial interest. Maxim Gorky has long been popular in this country, and
his imprisonment on the charge of conspiracy to overthrow the Government
has recently brought him into greater prominence. Chekhov's stories are
now beginning to be translated into English, and since they are much wider
in scope and more varied in style than Gorky's they are likely to find
more readers among us. According to Tolstoy Chekhov is the founder of a
new school of literature, and his influence will be lastingly felt
throughout the world. He was born in 1860, the son of a serf who had
freed himself by his own ability. He was educated as a physician in the
University of Moscow, and began to write for college journals at the age
of nineteen. His death last year is deeply regretted, since he was at the
hight of his powers of production and his stories were becoming
somewhat more optimistic in tone. The illustrations accompanying this
article are all taken from caricatures originally published in Russian
newspapers and magazines. The translation is by Lizzie B.
Gorin.—EDITOR.] | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| 120 | Author: | Gorky, Maxim | Requires cookie* | | | Title: | Philip Vasilyevich's Story | | | | Published: | 1996 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | [Either on account of lack of evidence or because of the
protests of literary men and societies throughout the world, Maxim
Gorky has at last been released from prison, and he will not be
prosecuted on the charge of conspiring to overthrow the Russian
Government. It is not to be expected that his recent experiences in
the hands of the police will modify the appropriateness of the
pseudonym under which he writes, Gorky, "the Bitter One."—EDITOR.] | | | Similar Items: | Find |
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