| | 142 | 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 |
| 143 | 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 |
| 145 | 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 |
| 148 | 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 |
| 149 | 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 |
| 150 | Author: | Verne, Jules, 1828-1905 | Requires cookie* | | | Title: | The Blockade Runners | | | | Published: | 1995 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | THE Clyde was the first river whose waters were lashed
into foam by a steam-boat. It was in 1812 when the steamer
called the Comet ran between Glasgow and Greenock, at
the speed of six miles an hour. Since that time more than
a million of steamers or packet-boats have plied this Scotch
river, and the inhabitants of Glasgow must be as familiar
as any people with the wonders of steam navigation. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| 151 | Author: | Villard, Oswald Garrison | Requires cookie* | | | Title: | The Negro in the Regular Army | | | | Published: | 1995 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | WHEN the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts Regiment stormed Fort
Wagner July 18, 1863, only to be driven back with the loss of its
colonel, Robert Gould Shaw, and many of its rank and file, it
established for all time the fact that the colored soldier would
fight and fight well. This had already been demonstrated in
Louisiana by colored regiments under the command of General Godfrey
Weitzel in the attack upon Port Hudson on May 27 of the same year.
On that occasion regiments composed for the greater part of raw
recruits, plantation hands with centuries of servitude under the
lash behind them, stormed trenches and dashed upon cold steel in
the hands of their former masters and oppressors. After that there
was no more talk in the portion of the country of the "natural
cowardice" of the negro. But the heroic qualities of Colonel Shaw,
his social prominence and that of his officers, and the comparative
nearness of their battlefield to the North, attracted greater and
more lasting attention to the daring and bravery of their exploit,
until it finally became fixed in many minds as the first real
baptism of fire of colored American soldiers. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| 152 | Author: | Wallace, George | Requires cookie* | | | Title: | From the United States chronicle, Thursday, February 19, 1784. | | | | Published: | 1995 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | IN this Page last Week a clear Consutation of
the original Claim to the Right of Slavery was given, by that Ornament
of his Profession Judge BLACKSTONE,—the Subject is now
concluded with the Sentiments of that ingenious Lawyer and excellent
Writer GEORGE WALLIS as published in his «
System of the Laws of Sreeland:» —
Speaking of the Negroes that are purchased from their Princes, who
pretend to have a Right to dispose of them, and that they are like other
Commodities, transported by the Merchants, who have bought them, into
America, in Order to be exposed to Sale, he says:—«If
this Trade admits of a rational or a moral Justification, every Crime,
even the most atrocious, may be justified. Government was instituted for
the Good of Mankind; Kings, Princes, Governors, are not Proprietors of
those who are subject to their Authority; they have not a Right to make
them miserable. On the contrary, their Authority is rested in them, that
they may, by the just, Exercise of it, promote the Happiness of their
People. Of course they have not a Right to dispose of their Liberty, and
to sell them for Slaves. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| 154 | Author: | Washington, Booker T. | Requires cookie* | | | Title: | The Case of the Negro | | | | Published: | 1995 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | ALL attempts to settle the question of the Negro in the South
by his removal from this country have so far failed, and I think
that they are likely to fail. The next census will probably show
that we have nearly ten million black people in the United States,
about eight millions of whom are in the Southern states. In fact,
we have almost a nation within a nation. The Negro population in
the United States lacks but two millions of being as large as the
whole population of Mexico, and is nearly twice as large as that of
Canada. Our black people equal in number the combined populations
of Switzerland, Greece, Honduras, Nicaragua, Cuba, Uraguay [sic],
Santo Domingo, Paraguay, and Costa Rica. When we consider, in
connection with these facts, that the race has doubled itself since
its freedom, and is still increasing, it hardly seems possible for
any one to take seriously any scheme of emigration from America as
a method of solution. At most, even if the government were to
provide the means, but a few hundred thousand could be transported
each year. The yearly increase in population would more than
likely overbalance the number transported. Even if it did not, the
time required to get rid of the Negro by this method would perhaps
be fifty or seventy-five years. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| 156 | Author: | Washington, Booker T. | Requires cookie* | | | Title: | The Religious Life of the Negro. | | | | Published: | 1995 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | IN everything that I have been able to read about the
religious life of the Negro, it has seemed to me that writers have
been too much disposed to treat of it as something fixed and
unchanging. They have not sufficiently emphasized the fact that
the Negro people, in respect to their religious life, have been,
almost since they landed in America, in a process of change and
growth. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| 157 | Author: | Washington, Booker T. | Requires cookie* | | | Title: | Tuskegee: A Retrospect and Prospect | | | | Published: | 1995 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | THE Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute celebrates this
year on April 4, 5 and 6, its twenty-fifth birthday. As I look
back at its humble beginnings, and its gradual growth into what it
is, and the promise of what it shall be, it seems to me that one of
its more important services has been to provide Negroes with an
unusual opportunity to engage in the education and upbuilding of
their own race. This school represents, in a large measure, the
effort of the Negro race to help itself, and therein is the real
significance of its work. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| 159 | Author: | Wells, H. G. (Herbert George), 1866-1946 | Requires cookie* | | | Title: | The Invisible Man | | | | Published: | 1995 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | The stranger came early in February, one wintry day, through a
biting wind and a driving snow, the last snowfall of the year, over
the down, walking as it seemed from Bramblehurst railway station,
and carrying a little black portmanteau in his thickly gloved hand.
He was wrapped up from head to foot, and the brim of his soft felt
hat hid every inch of his face but the shiny tip of his nose; the snow
had piled itself against his shoulders and chest, and added a white
crest to the burden he carried. He staggered into the Coach and
Horses, more dead than alive as it seemed, and flung his portmanteau
down. "A fire," he cried, "in the name of human charity! A room and
a fire!" He stamped and shook the snow from off himself in the bar,
and followed Mrs. Hall into her guest parlour to strike his bargain.
And with that much introduction, that and a ready acquiescence
to terms and a couple of sovereigns flung upon the table, he took
up his quarters in the inn. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
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