| | 87 | Author: | Davis, Rebecca Harding, 1831-1910 | Add | | | Title: | Margret Howth: A Story of To-Day  | | | | Published: | 1996 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | LET me tell you a story of To-Day,—very
homely and narrow in its scope and aim. Not
of the To-Day whose significance in the history
of humanity only those shall read who will
live when you and I are dead. We can bear
the pain in silence, if our hearts are strong
enough, while the nations of the earth stand
afar off. I have no word of this To-Day to
speak. I write from the border of the battlefield,
and I find in it no theme for shallow argument
or flimsy rhymes. The shadow of death
has fallen on us; it chills the very heaven. No
child laughs in my face as I pass down the
street. Men have forgotten to hope, forgotten
to pray; only in the bitterness of endurance,
they say "in the morning, `Would God it were
even!' and in the evening, `Would God it were
morning!' '' Neither I nor you have the prophet's
vision to see the age as its meaning stands
written before God. Those who shall live when
we are dead may tell their children, perhaps,
how, out of anguish and darkness such as the
world seldom has borne, the enduring morning
evolved of the true world and the true man.
It is not clear to us. Hands wet with a brother's
blood for the Right, a slavery of intolerance,
the hackneyed cant of men, or the blood-thirstiness of women, utter no prophecy to us
of the great To-Morrow of content and right
that holds the world. Yet the To-Morrow is
there; if God lives, it is there. The voice of
the meek Nazarene, which we have deafened
down as ill-timed, unfit to teach the watchword
of the hour, renews the quiet promise of its
coming in simple, humble things. Let us go
down and look for it. There is no need that
we should feebly vaunt and madden ourselves
over our self-seen rights, whatever they may
be, forgetting what broken shadows they are
of eternal truths in that calm where He sits
and with His quiet hand controls us. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| 88 | Author: | Davis, Rebecca Harding, 1831-1910 | Add | | | Title: | A Middle-Aged Woman | | | | Published: | 1996 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | THE clock was pointing to six when Mrs. Shore and her son's wife
turned into a shaded street on their way home. The air blew sharply
up from the sea. Mrs. Shore buttoned her fur cape and quickened
her pace. Maria, as usual, lagged a step behind her. Maria was a
tall, willowy girl with delicate features and milk and rose tints in her
skin. She had the conscious pose of the acknowledged beauty in a
small town, for in her old home, Ford City, Kansas, newspapers had
ranked her with Helen of Troy and Recamier. But her blue eyes
were dull and evasive; she laughed at the end of every sentence, as
if not sure of herself or her companion or of anything else. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| 89 | Author: | Davis, Rebecca Harding, 1831-1910 | Add | | | Title: | One Week an Editor | | | | Published: | 1996 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | TO preach a sermon or edit a newspaper were the two things in life
which I always felt I could do with credit to myself and benefit to
the world, if I only had the chance. As a lawyer I knew I had not
been a success; as a member of society I weighed little weight; as
librarian for the Antiquarian Society I was but a drudge, earning
bread and meat; my one chance, I was assured, lay in the pulpit or
editor's desk. The chance was slow in coming. Clergymen in even
the broadest of churches are not apt to open their pulpits to lay
old bachelors. Years ago I lobbied in one newspaper office and
another through New York to get a footing as manager, city or
financial editor, or even reporter; my friends pushed me as a young
man of "fine literary tastes," but all to no purpose. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| 90 | Author: | Dickens, Charles, 1812-1870 | Add | | | Title: | American Notes | | | | Published: | 1996 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | I SHALL never forget the one-fourth serious and three-fourths
comical astonishment with which, on the morning of the
third of January, eighteen-hundred-and-forty-two, I opened
the door of, and put my head into, a "state-room" on board the
Britannia steam-packet, twelve hundred tons burden per register,
bound for Halifax and Boston, and carrying her Majesty's mails. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| 95 | Author: | Dunbar, Alice | Add | | | Title: | Edouard | | | | Published: | 1996 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | PERE BOUTIN came down the sandy, pine-bordered walk with a
knotted brow and a gait that grew slower and slower. He was
perplexed and his forehead knitted more and more in a comical
assumption of dignity. Père Boutin thought that he was
dignified, but when one weighs two hundred pounds, and is short
and rolls in one's gait, is it reasonable to expect that the world will
be impressed by one's magnificence? | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| 96 | Author: | Dunbar, Alice | Add | | | Title: | Lesie, the Choir Boy | | | | Published: | 1996 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | OVER and above all things nature had been lavish to Lesie
Channing in the matter of a voice. It was a full, clear soprano with
rich tones in it that presaged a marvel of tone in later years. He
loved to sing. It was a pure joy to him to fill the hall and room of
his tenement home with the only tunes that he knew—"coon" songs
and music-hall ballads. But while he delighted in the sounds that he
made, no one had ever told Lesie that his voice was marvellous. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| 97 | Author: | Eliot, T. S. | Add | | | Title: | The Second-Order Mind | | | | Published: | 1996 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | TO any one who is at all capable of experiencing the pleasures of justice,
it is gratifying to be able to make amends to a writer whom one has
vaguely depreciated for some years. The faults and foibles of Matthew
Arnold are no less evident to me now than twelve years ago, after my
first admiration for him; but I hope that now, on rereading some of his
prose with more care, I can better appreciate his position. And what
makes Arnold seem all the more remarkable is, that if he were our exact
contemporary, he would find all his labour to perform again. A moderate
number of persons have engaged in what is called "critical" writing, but
no conclusion is any more solidly established than it was in 1865. In the
first essay in the first Essays in Criticism we read that
"it has long seemed to me that the burst of creative activity in our
literature, through the first quarter of this century, had about it in fact
something premature; and that from this cause its productions are
doomed, most of them, in spite of the sanguine hopes which
accompanied and do still accompany them, to prove hardly more lasting
than the productions of far less splendid epochs. And this prematureness
comes from its having proceeded without having its proper data, without
sufficient material to work with. In other words, the English poetry of
the first quarter of this century, with plenty of energy, plenty of creative
force, did not know enough. This makes Byron so empty of matter,
Shelley so incoherent, Wordsworth even, profound as he is, yet so
wanting in completeness and variety." | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| 98 | Author: | Eliot, T. S. | Add | | | Title: | The Possibility of a Poetic Drama | | | | Published: | 1996 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | THE questions—why there is no poetic drama to-day, how the stage
has lost all hold on literary art, why so many poetic plays are
written which can only be read, and read, if at all, without
pleasure—have become insipid, almost academic. The usual
conclusion is either that "conditions" are too much for us, or that
we really prefer other types of literature, or simply that we are
uninspired. As for the last alternative, it is not to be
entertained; as for the second, what type do we prefer? and as for
the first, no one has ever shown me "conditions" except of the most
superficial. The reasons for raising the question again are first
that the majority, perhaps, certainly a large number, of poets
hanker for the stage; and second, that a not negligible public
appears to want verse plays. Surely here is some legitimate
craving, not restricted to a few persons, which only the verse play
can satisfy. And surely the critical attitude is to attempt to
analyse the conditions and the other data. If there comes to light
some conclusive obstacle, the investigation should at least help us
to turn our thoughts to more profitable pursuits; and if there is
not we may hope to arrive eventually at a statement of conditions
which might be altered. Possibly we shall find that our incapacity
has a deeper source: the arts have flourished at times when there
was no drama; possibly we are incompetent altogether; in that case
the stage will be not the seat, but at all events a symptom, of the
malady. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| 99 | Author: | Far, Sui Sin | Add | | | Title: | Chan Hen Yen, Chinese Student | | | | Published: | 1996 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | HE was Han Yen of the family of Chan, from the town of Choo-Chow,
in the Province of Kiangsoo. His father was a schoolmaster, so also had
been his grandfather, and his great grandfather before him. He was
chosen out of three sons to be the scholar of the family, and during his
boyhood studied diligently and with ambition. From school to college he
passed, and at the age of twenty, took successfully the examinations
which entitled him to a western education at government expense. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
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