| | 261 | Author: | Poe, Edgar Allan, 1809-1849 | Requires cookie* | | | Title: | The Tell-Tale Heart  | | | | Published: | 1995 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | TRUE! nervous, very, very dreadfully nervous
I had been and am; but why WILL you say
that I am mad? The disease had sharpened
my senses, not destroyed, not dulled them. Above
all was the sense of hearing acute. I heard all things
in the heaven and in the earth. I heard many things
in hell. How then am I mad? Hearken! and observe
how healthily, how calmly, I can tell you the
whole story. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| 262 | Author: | Poe, Edgar Allan, 1809-1849 | Requires cookie* | | | Title: | "Thou Art the Man" | | | | Published: | 1995 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | I will now play the Oedipus to the Rattleborough enigma. I will
expound to you — as I alone can — the secret of the enginery that effected
the Rattleborough miracle — the one, the true, the admitted, the undisputed,
the indisputable miracle, which put a definite end to infidelity among the
Rattleburghers, and converted to the orthodoxy of the grandames all the
carnal-minded who had ventured to be sceptical before. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| 263 | Author: | Poe, Edgar Allan, 1809-1849 | Requires cookie* | | | Title: | William Wilson | | | | Published: | 1995 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | Let me call myself, for the present, William Wilson. The fair
page now lying before me need not be sullied with my real
appellation. This has been already too much an object for the
scorn — for the horror — for the detestation of my race. To the
uttermost regions of the globe have not the indignant winds bruited
its unparalleled infamy? Oh, outcast of all outcasts most
abandoned! — to the earth art thou not forever dead? to its honours,
to its flowers, to its golden aspirations? — and a cloud, dense,
dismal, and limitless, does it not hang eternally between thy hopes
and heaven? | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| 264 | Author: | Pokagon, Simon | Requires cookie* | | | Title: | The Future of the Red Man | | | | Published: | 1995 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | OFTEN in the stillness of the night, when all nature seems
asleep about me, there comes a gentle rapping at the door of my
heart. I open it; and a voice inquires, "Pokagon, what of your
people? What will their future be?" My answer is: "Mortal man has
not the power to draw aside the veil of unborn time to tell the
future of his race. That gift belongs to the Divine alone. But it
is given to him to closely judge the future by the present and the
past." Hence, in order to approximate the future of our race, we
must consider our natural capabilities and our environments, as
connected with the dominant race which outnumbers us — three hundred
to one — in this land of our fathers. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| 266 | Author: | Pope, J. Worden | Requires cookie* | | | Title: | "The North American Indian—The Disappearance of the Race A
Popular Fallacy" | | | | Published: | 1995 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | There undoubtedly exists a deeply-rooted conviction, supposed
to rest upon a firm historical basis, that the race of North
American Indians is rapidly disappearing before the advance of
civilization; and this conviction, coupled with the twin conception
that the noble red man has been the victim of the abuse of the
European conqueror, has long formed a theme for the writers of
poetry, romance, and history. For so many generations has this
theme formed part of the traditions of our race, and so firm a hold
has it taken upon the imagination, the sympathy, and the sentiments
of the populace, that any attempt to dislodge it would doubtless be
regarded with complete incredulity, and any data adduced to
disprove the belief would be disbelieved as absurd by the average
well-read American. To assert, therefore, that there is no proof
to sustain the popular belief, that on the contrary there is reason
to doubt that the Indian race has materially diminished, would be
considered by such persons simply as an iconoclastic attempt to
subvert the basal facts of history. It may therefore be startling,
but it is true, not only that there exists no substantial proof
that the red man is disappearing before the encroachments of
civilization, but that many solid facts indicate that there has
been no material diminution of the Indian population, or at least
in the quantity of Indian blood, within the historic period. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| 267 | Author: | Prescott, Harriet E. | Requires cookie* | | | Title: | In a Cellar | | | | Published: | 1995 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | IT was the day of Madame de St. Cyr's dinner, an event I never
missed; for, the mistress of a mansion in the Faubourg St. Germain,
there still lingered about her the exquisite grace and good-breeding peculiar to the old regime, that insensibly
communicates itself to the guests till they move in an atmosphere
of ease that constitutes the charm of home. One was always sure of
meeting desirable and well-assorted people here, and a contre-temps was impossible. Moreover, the house was not at the command
of all; and Madame de St. Cyr, with the daring strength which, when
found in a woman at all, should, to be endurable, be combined with
a sweet but firm restraint, rode rough-shod over the parvenus
of the Empire, and was resolute enough to insulate herself even
among the old noblesse, who, as all the world knows, insulate
themselves from the rest of France. There were rare qualities in
this woman, and were I to have selected one who with an even hand
should carry a snuffy candle through a magazine of powder, my
choice would have devolved upon her; and she would have done it. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| 268 | Author: | Prescott, Harriet E. | Requires cookie* | | | Title: | Dark Ways | | | | Published: | 1995 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | WHEN God's curse forsook my country, it fell on me. I had
been young and heroic; I had fought well; what portion of the
clock-work of Fate had been allotted me I had utterly performed.
Twelve years ago I became a man and strove for my country's
freedom; now she has attained her heights without me, and I—what
am I? A shapeless hulk, that stays in the shadow, and that hates
the world and the people of the world, and verily the God above the
world! | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| 270 | Author: | Rogers, E. Mandevill | Requires cookie* | | | Title: | Steadfast Falters | | | | Published: | 1995 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | Randolph Crosby's philosophy of life forbade his feeling or
expressing emotion, except for the slender, fair-haired girl who
stood beside him, and who had in a measure taken the place of the
wife whose memory she perpetuated. Nevertheless, the sight of
the thoroughbreds as they filed past the club enclosure, their
jockeys perching like monkeys on their glossy backs, made the
muscles of his throat contract a little. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| 271 | Author: | Runnion, James B. | Requires cookie* | | | Title: | The Negro Exodus | | | | Published: | 1995 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | A RECENT sojourn in the South for a few weeks, chiefly in Louisiana
and Mississippi, gave the writer an opportunity to inquire into
what has been so aptly called "the negro exodus." The emigration
of blacks to Kansas began early in the spring of this year. For a
time there was a stampede from two or three of the river parishes
in Louisiana and as many counties opposite in Mississippi.
Several thousand negroes (certainly not fewer than five thousand,
and variously estimated as high as ten thousand) had left their
cabins before the rush could be stayed or the excitement lulled.
Early in May most of the negroes who had quit work for the purpose
of emigrating, but had not succeeded in getting off, were persuaded
to return to the plantations, and from that time on there have been
only straggling families and groups that have watched for and
seized the first opportunity for transportation to the North.
There is no doubt, however, that there is still a consuming desire
among the negroes of the cotton districts in these two States to
seek new homes, and there are the best reasons for believing that
the exodus will take a new start next spring, after the gathering
and conversion of the growing crop. Hundreds of negroes who
returned from the river-banks for lack of transportation, and
thousands of others infected with the ruling discontent, are
working harder in the fields this summer, and practicing more
economy and self-denial than ever before, in order to have the
means next winter and spring to pay their way to the "promised
land." | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| 273 | Author: | Wharton review: Sedgwick, Henry Dwight. | Requires cookie* | | | Title: | The Novels of Mrs. Wharton | | | | Published: | 1995 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | WHEN Mrs. Wharton's stories first appeared, in that early
period which, as we have now learned, was merely a period of
apprenticeship, everybody said, "How clever!" "How wonderfully
clever!" And the criticism—to adopt a generic term for
indiscriminate adjectives—was apt, for the most conspicuous
trait
in the stories was cleverness. They were astonishingly clever;
and
their cleverness, as an ostensible quality will, caught and held
the attention. And yet, though undoubtedly correct, the term
owes
its correctness, in part at least, to its ready-to-wear quality,
to
its negative merit of vague amplitude, behind which the most
diverse gifts and capacities may lie concealed. No readers of
Mrs.
Wharton, after the first shock of bewildered admiration, rest
content with it, but grope about to lift the cloaking surtout of
cleverness and to see as best they may how and by what methods
her
preternaturally nimble wits are playing their game,—for it is a
game that Mrs. Wharton plays, pitting herself against a situation
to see how much she can score. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| 274 | Author: | Spooner, Lysander | Requires cookie* | | | Title: | No Treason: The Constitution of No Authority | | | | Published: | 1995 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | The Constitution has no inherent authority or obligation. It has no
authority or obligation at all, unless as a contract between man and
man. And it does not so much as even purport to be a contract between
persons now existing. It purports, at most, to be only a contract
between persons living eighty years ago. [This essay was written in
1869.] And it can be supposed to have been a contract then only between
persons who had already come to years of discretion, so as to be
competent to make reasonable and obligatory contracts. Furthermore,
we know, historically, that only a small portion even of the people
then existing were consulted on the subject, or asked, or permitted to
express either their consent or dissent in any formal manner. Those
persons, if any, who did give their consent formally, are all dead now.
Most of them have been dead forty, fifty, sixty, or seventy years. And
The constitution, so far as it was their contract, died with them. They
had no natural power or right to make it obligatory upon their children.
It is not only plainly impossible, in the nature of things, that they
Could bind their posterity, but they did not even attempt to bind them.
That is to say, the instrument does not purport to be an agreement
between any body but "the people" THEN existing; nor does it, either
expressly or impliedly, assert any right, power, or disposition, on their
part, to bind anybody but themselves. Let us see. Its language is:
We, the people of the United States (that is, the people then existing
in the United States), in order to form a more perfect union, insure
domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the
general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves
And our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the
United States of America. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| 276 | Author: | Thompson, Charles Miner | Requires cookie* | | | Title: | Miss Wilkins: An Idealist in Masquerade | | | | Published: | 1995 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | ON any walk or drive in rural New England, in the springtime,
one is sure to find on some abandoned farm an unkempt old apple
orchard. The gnarled and twisted trees uphold on their rotting
trunks more dead than living branches, and bear, if at all, only a
few scattered and ghostly blossoms. And in that group of pitiable
trees, dying there in the warm sunshine, there will be nothing to
suggest life and joyousness except the golden woodpeckers with
their flickering flight, and the bluebirds with their musical, low
warble. If, indeed, the orchard stands upon a sloping hillside,
one can glance away and see in the valley prosperous villages,
smiling, fertile farms, and other orchards, well kept, healthy, and
looking from their wealth of blossoms like white clouds stranded.
But if one be of a pessimistic complexion, he can shut his eyes to
that pleasanter prospect, gaze only at the old orchard, and think
of it as typical of New England. So, in fact, in its limited
degree, it is; but almost to the ultimate degree of exactness is it
typical of the New England village which Miss Wilkins delights to
draw. In place of the worn-out trees there are gnarled and twisted
men and women. There are, of course, the young people, with their
brief, happy time of courtship, to take the place in it of the
birds; but her village, like the orchard, is a desolate and
saddening spectacle. In that community of Pembroke which she has
celebrated, what twisted characters! Barney Thayer refuses to
marry Charlotte Barnard because, as the result of a quarrel with
her father, Cephas, he hastily vows never to enter the house again.
Not the anger of his mother, not the suffering of his sweetheart,
not even jealousy of handsome Thomas Paine,—who, seeing her
forsaken, makes bold to woo,—has power to move him from his
stubborn stand. The selfish pride of Cephas is so great that he
lets his daughter's happiness be destroyed rather than admit
himself wrong, or take the smallest step to reconcile him with her
lover. Barney Thayer inherits his self-will from his mother, a
woman of indomitable will, who rules her family with an iron hand.
When she hears that Barney has refused to marry Charlotte, she
forbids him ever to step within her door again; when her youngest
son, Ephraim, who has a weak heart and whom the doctor has
forbidden her to whip, disobeys her, she whips him, and he dies;
when her daughter Rebecca falls in love with William Berry, she
forbids the marriage for a trivial cause, and when Rebecca, denied
the legitimate path of love, steps aside into the other way, she
disowns and casts her out. She loses all her children rather than
yield to them the least shadow of her authority. Charlotte
Barnard's cousin, Sylvia Crane, leaving her own house on the Sunday
night of Charlotte's quarrel with Barney to comfort her, misses the
weekly call of Richard Alger, her lover. His nature, compounded of
habit and pride and stubbornness, does not let him come again, once
his pride has been offended, once his habit has been broken. Silas
Berry—William Berry's father—is determined to sell his cherries
for an exorbitant price. When the young people refuse to buy, he
tells William and Rose, his children, to invite them to a picnic
and cherry-picking. When the guests are departing, he waylays them
to demand payment for his cherries. He outrages common decency
with his mean trickery, but he has his way. Nearly every character
in the book is a monstrous example of stubbornness,—of that will
which enforces its ends, however trivial, even to self-destruction.
The people are not normal; they are hardly sane. Such is
Miss Wilkins's village, and it is a true picture; but it wholly
represents New England life no more than the dying apple orchard
wholly represents New England scenery. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| 279 | Author: | Trux, J. J. | Requires cookie* | | | Title: | Negro Minstrelsy — Ancient and Modern | | | | Published: | 1995 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | It is now some eighteen or twenty years since an enterprising
Yankee, actuated, it is but charitable to suppose, by the purest
love of musical art, by the enthusiasm of the discoverer, or by a
proper and praiseworthy desire for posthumous fame, produced upon
the boards of one of our metropolitan theatres, a musical sketch
entitled "Jim Crow." Beyond the simple fact of its production by
the estimable gentleman above referred to, the origin of this
ancient and peculiar melody is beyond the reach of modern
antiquarian lore. Whether it was first sung upon the banks of the
Alatamaha, the Alabama, or the Mississippi; or, whether it is pre-American, and a relic of heathen rites in Congo, or in that
mysterious heart of Africa, which foot of civilized man has never
trod, is a problem whose solution must be left to the zeal and
research of some future Ethiopian Oldbuck. It is sufficient for
the present disquisition to know that it appeared in the manner
above stated. To those (if there can be any such) who are
unacquainted with its character and general scope, it may be proper
to remark that "Jim Crow" is what may be called a dramatic song,
depending for its success, perhaps more than any play ever written
for the stage, upon the action and mimetic powers of the performer.
Its success was immediate and marked. It touched a chord in the
American heart which had never before vibrated, but which now
responded to the skilful fingers of its first expounder, like the
music of the Bermoothes to the magic wand of Prospero. The
schoolboy whistled the melody on his unwilling way to his daily
tasks. The ploughman checked his oxen in mid-furrow, as he reached
its chorus, that the poetic exhortation to "do just so," might have
the action suited to the word. Merchants and staid professional
men, to whom a joke was a sin, were sometimes seen by the eyes of
prying curiosity in private to unbend their dignity to that weird
and wonderful posture, now, alas! seldom seen but in historic
pictures, or upon the sign of a tobacconist; and of the thoroughly
impressive and extraordinary sights which the writer of this
article has in his lifetime beheld, the most memorable and
noteworthy was that of a young lady in a sort of inspired rapture,
throwing her weight alternately upon the tendon Achillis of the
one, and the toes of the other foot, her left hand resting upon her
hip, her right, like that of some prophetic sybil, extended aloft,
gyrating as the exigencies of the song required, and singing Jim
Crow at the top of her voice. Popularity like this laughs at
anathemas from the pulpit, or sneers from the press. The song
which is sung in the parlor, hummed in the kitchen, and whistled in
the stable, may defy oblivion. But such signal and triumphant
success can produce but one result. Close upon the heels of Jim
Crow, came treading, one after the other, "Zip Coon," "Long-tailed
Blue," "Ole Virginny neber tire," "Settin' on a Rail," and a host
of others, all of superior merit, though unequal alike in their
intrinsic value, and in their participation in public approval.
The golden age of negro literature had commenced. Thenceforward
for several years the appearance of a new melody was an event whose
importance can hardly be appreciated by the coming generation. It
flew from mouth to mouth, and from hamlet to hamlet, with a
rapidity which seemed miraculous. The stage-driver dropped a stave
or two of it during a change of the mails at some out of the way
tavern; it was treasured up and remembered, and added to from day
to day, till the whole became familiar as household words. Yankee
Doodle went to town with a load of garden vegetables. If upon his
ears there fell the echo of a new plantation song, barter and
sight-seeing were secondary objects till he had mastered both its
words and music. Thereafter, and until supplanted by some equally
enthusiastic and enterprising neighbor, Yankee Doodle was the hero
of his native vale, of Todd Hollow. Like the troubadours and
minstrels of ancient days, he found open doors and warm hearts
wherever he went. Cider, pumpkin pie, and the smiles of the fair
were bestowed upon him with an unsparing hand. His song was for
the time to him the wand of Fortunatus. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| 280 | Author: | New Jersey: Justices of the Supreme Court and Attorney Generals | Requires cookie* | | | Title: | Cases adjudged in the Supreme Court of New-Jersey; relative to the
manumission of Negroes and others holden in bondage. | | | | Published: | 1995 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | AT a general Meeting of the NEW-JERSEY SOCIETY FOR PROMOTING THE
ABOLITION OF SLAVERY, September 2, 1793, RESOLVED,
That the President of this Society collect and
have printed, the `Decisions of the Supreme Court in this State,
relative to the Manumission of Negroes and others, unlawfully
holden in Bondage.'
EXTRACT FROM THE MINUTES, ROBERT SMITH, JUN. SECRETARY. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
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