| | 23 | Author: | Burroughs, Edgar Rice, 1875-1950 | Requires cookie* | | | Title: | A Princess of Mars  | | | | Published: | 1993 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | I am a very old man; how old I do not know. Possibly I am
a hundred, possibly more; but I cannot tell because I have
never aged as other men, nor do I remember any childhood.
So far as I can recollect I have always been a man, a man
of about thirty. I appear today as I did forty years and
more ago, and yet I feel that I cannot go on living forever;
that some day I shall die the real death from which there is
no resurrection. I do not know why I should fear death,
I who have died twice and am still alive; but yet I have the
same horror of it as you who have never died, and it is
because of this terror of death, I believe, that I am so
convinced of my mortality. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| 25 | Author: | Clinton, William Jefferson | Requires cookie* | | | Title: | Inaugural Presidential Address | | | | Published: | 1993 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | My fellow citizens, today we celebrate the mystery of American
renewal. This ceremony is held in the depth of winter, but by the
words we speak and the faces we show the world, we force the
spring. A spring reborn in the world's oldest democracy, that
brings forth the vision and courage to reinvent America. When
our founders boldly declared America's independence to the world,
and our purposes to the Almighty, they knew that America, to
endure, would have to change. Not change for change sake, but
change to preserve America's ideals: life, liberty, the pursuit
of happiness. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| 27 | Author: | Conrad, Joseph, 1857-1924 | Requires cookie* | | | Title: | The Secret Sharer | | | | Published: | 1993 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | On my right hand there were lines of fishing stakes
resembling a mysterious system of half-submerged
bamboo fences, incomprehensible in its division of
the domain of tropical fishes, and crazy of aspect as if
abandoned for ever by some nomad tribe of fishermen
now gone to the other end of the ocean; for there was
no sign of human habitation as far as the eye could
reach. To the left a group of barren islets, suggesting
ruins of stone walls, towers, and blockhouses, had its
foundations set in a blue sea that itself looked solid,
so still and stable did it lie below my feet; even the
track of light from the westering, sun shone smoothly,
without that animated glitter which tells of an imperceptible
ripple. And when I turned my head to take
a parting glance at the tug which had just left us
anchored outside the bar, I saw the straight line of the
flat shore joined to the stable sea, edge to edge, with
a perfect and unmarked closeness, in one leveled floor
half brown, half blue under the enormous dome of
the sky. Corresponding in their insignificance to the
islets of the sea, two small clumps of trees, one on
each side of the only fault in the impeccable joint,
marked the mouth of the river Meinam we had just
left on the first preparatory stage of our homeward
journey; and, far back on the inland level, a larger
and loftier mass, the grove surrounding the great
Paknam pagoda, was the only thing on which the eye
could rest from the vain task of exploring the monotonous sweep
of the horizon. Here and there gleams as
of a few scattered pieces of silver marked the windings
of the great river; and on the nearest of them, just
within the bar, the tug steaming right into the
land became lost
to my sight, hull and funnel and masts, as
though the impassive earth had swallowed her up
without an effort, without a tremor. My eye followed
the light cloud of her smoke, now here, now there,
above the plain, according to the devious curves of the
stream, but always fainter and farther away, till I
lost it at last behind the miter-shaped hill of the great
pagodas. And then I was left alone. with my ship,
anchored at the head of the Gulf of Siam. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| 28 | Author: | Douglass, Frederick, 1817?-1895 | Requires cookie* | | | Title: | My Escape from Slavery | | | | Published: | 1993 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | IN the first narrative of my experience in slavery, written
nearly forty years ago, and in various writings since, I have given
the public what I considered very good reasons for withholding the
manner of my escape. In substance these reasons were, first, that
such publication at any time during the existence of slavery might
be used by the master against the slave, and prevent the future
escape of any who might adopt the same means that I did. The
second reason was, if possible, still more binding to silence: the
publication of details would certainly have put in peril the
persons and property of those who assisted. Murder itself was not
more sternly and certainly punished in the State of Maryland than
that of aiding and abetting the escape of a slave. Many colored
men, for no other crime than that of giving aid to a fugitive
slave, have, like Charles T. Torrey, perished in prison. The
abolition of slavery in my native State and throughout the country,
and the lapse of time, render the caution hitherto
observed no longer necessary. But even since the abolition of
slavery, I have sometimes thought it well enough to baffle
curiosity by saying that while slavery existed there were good
reasons for not telling the manner of my escape, and since slavery
had ceased to exist, there was no reason for telling it. I shall
now, however, cease to avail myself of this formula, and, as far as
I can, endeavor to satisfy this very natural curiosity. I should,
perhaps, have yielded to that feeling sooner, had there been
anything very heroic or thrilling in the incidents connected with
my escape, for I am sorry to say I have nothing of that sort to
tell; and yet the courage that could risk betrayal and the bravery
which was ready to encounter death, if need be, in pursuit of
freedom, were essential features in the undertaking. My success
was due to address rather than courage, to good luck rather than
bravery. My means of escape were provided for me by the very men
who were making laws to hold and bind me more securely in slavery. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| 29 | Author: | Douglass, Frederick, 1817?-1895 | Requires cookie* | | | Title: | Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave | | | | Published: | 1993 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | In the month of August, 1841, I attended an anti-
slavery convention in Nantucket, at which it was
my happiness to become acquainted with FREDERICK
DOUGLASS, the writer of the following Narrative. He
was a stranger to nearly every member of that body;
but, having recently made his escape from the south-
ern prison-house of bondage, and feeling his curiosity
excited to ascertain the principles and measures of
the abolitionists, — of whom he had heard a somewhat
vague description while he was a slave, — he was in-
duced to give his attendance, on the occasion al-
luded to, though at that time a resident in New
Bedford. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| 31 | Author: | James, Henry | Requires cookie* | | | 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 |
| 32 | Author: | Kirkland, Winifred Margaretta | Requires cookie* | | | Title: | The Joys of Being a Woman and Other Papers | | | | Published: | 1993 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | Some years ago there appeared in the "Atlantic" an
essay entitled "The Joys of Being a Negro." With a
purpose analogous to that of the author, I am moved to
declare the real delights of the apparently
downtrodden, and in the face of a bulky literature
expressive of pathos and protest, to confess frankly
the joys of being a woman. It is a feminist argument
accepted as axiomatic that every woman would be a man
if she could be, while no man would be a woman if he
could help it. Every woman knows this is not fact but
falsehood, yet knows also that it is one of those
falsehoods on which depends the stability of the
universe. The idea that every woman is desirous of
becoming a man is as comforting to every male as its
larger corollary is alarming, namely, that women as a
mass have resolved to become men. The former notion
expresses man's view of femininity, and is flattering;
the latter expresses his view of feminism, and is
fearsome. Man's panic, indeed, before the hosts he
thinks he sees advancing, has lately become so acute
that there is danger of his paralysis. Now his
paralysis would defeat not only the purposes of
feminism, but also the sole purpose of woman's conduct
toward man from Eve's time to ours, a course of which
feminism is only a modern and consistent example. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| 35 | Author: | O'Brien, Fitz-James | Requires cookie* | | | Title: | The Diamond Lens | | | | Published: | 1993 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | From a very early period of my life the entire bent of my
inclinations had been towards microscopic investigations. When I
was not more than ten years old, a distant relative of our family,
hoping to astonish my inexperience, constructed a simple microscope
for me, by drilling in a disk of copper a small hole, in which a
drop of pure water was sustained by capillary attraction. This
very primitive apparatus, magnifying some fifty diameters,
presented, it is true, only indistinct and imperfect forms, but
still sufficiently wonderful to work up my imagination to a
preternatural state of excitement. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
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