| | 241 | Author: | Poe, Edgar Allan, 1809-1849 | Requires cookie* | | | Title: | A Tale of the Ragged Mountains  | | | | Published: | 1995 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | During the fall of the year 1827, while residing near
Charlottesville, Virginia, I casually made the acquaintance of Mr
Augustus Bedloe. This young gentleman was remarkable in every
respect, and excited in me a profound interest and curiosity. I
found it impossible to comprehend him either in his moral or his
physical relations. Of his family I could obtain no satisfactory
account. Whence he came, I never ascertained. Even about his
age — although I call him a young gentleman — there was something
which perplexed me in no little degree. He certainly seemed
young — and he made a point of speaking about his youth — yet there
were moments when I should have had little trouble in imagining
him a hundred years of age. But in no regard was he more
peculiar than in his personal appearance. He was singularly tall
and thin. He stooped much. His limbs were exceedingly long and
emaciated. His forehead was broad and low. His complexion was
absolutely bloodless. His mouth was large and flexible, and his
teeth were more wildly uneven, although sound, than I had ever
before seen teeth in a human head. The expression of his smile,
however, was by no means unpleasing, as might be supposed: but it
had no variation whatever. It was one of profound melancholy — of
a phaseless and
unceasing gloom. His eyes were abnormally large,
and round like those of a cat. The pupils, too, upon any
accession or diminution of light, underwent contraction or
dilation, just such as is observed in the feline tribe. In
moments of excitement the orbs grew bright to a degree almost
inconceivable; seeming to emit luminous rays, not of a reflected
but of an intrinsic lustre, as does a candle or the sun; yet
their ordinary condition was to totally vapid, filmy, and dull,
as to convey the idea of the eyes of a long-interred corpse. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| 242 | Author: | Poe, Edgar Allan, 1809-1849 | Requires cookie* | | | Title: | The Pit and the Pendulum | | | | Published: | 1995 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | I was sick — sick unto death with that long agony; and when
they at length unbound me, and I was permitted to sit, I felt that
my senses were leaving me. The sentence — the dread sentence of
death — was the last of distinct accentuation which reached my ears.
After that, the sound of the inquisitorial voices seemed merged in
one dreamy indeterminate hum. It conveyed to my soul the idea of
revolution — perhaps from its association in fancy with the burr
of a mill-wheel. This only for a brief period; for presently I
heard no more. Yet, for a while, I saw; but with how terrible an
exaggeration! I saw the lips of the black-robed judges. They
appeared to me white — whiter than the sheet upon which I trace
these words — and thin even to grotesqueness; thin with the
intensity of their expression
of firmness — of immoveable
resolution — of stern contempt of human torture. I saw that the
decrees of what to me was Fate, were still issuing from those lips.
I saw them writhe with a deadly locution. I saw them fashion the
syllables of my name; and I shuddered because no sound succeeded.
I saw, too, for a few moments of delirious horror, the soft and
nearly imperceptible waving of the sable draperies which enwrapped
the walls of the apartment. And then my vision fell upon the seven
tall candles upon the table. At first they wore the aspect of
charity, and seemed white slender angels who would save me; but
then, all at once, there came a most deadly nausea over my spirit,
and I felt every fibre in my frame thrill as if I had touched the
wire of a galvanic battery, while the angel forms became
meaningless spectres, with heads of flame, and I saw that from them
there would be no help. And there stole into my fancy, like a rich
musical note, the thought of what sweet rest there must be in the
grave. The thought came gently and stealthily, and it seemed long
before it attained full appreciation; but just as my spirit came at
length properly to feel and entertain it, the figures of the judges
vanished, as if magically, from before me; the tall candles sank
into nothingness; their flames went out utterly; the blackness of
darkness supervened; all sensation appeared swallowed up in that
mad rushing descent as of the soul into Hades. Then silence, and
stillness, and night were the universe. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| 243 | Author: | Poe, Edgar Allan, 1809-1849 | Requires cookie* | | | Title: | The Spectacles | | | | Published: | 1995 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | Many years ago, it was the fashion to ridicule the idea of
'love at first sight'; but those who think, not less than those
who feel deeply, have always advocated its existence. Modern
discoveries, indeed, in what may be termed ethical magnetism or
magneto-aesthetics, render it probable that the most natural,
and, consequently, the truest and most intense of the human
affections are those which arise in the heart as if by electric
sympathy — in a word, that the brightest and most enduring of the
psychal fetters are those which are riveted by a glance. The
confession I am about to make will add another to the already
almost innumerable instances of the truth of the position. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| 244 | 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 |
| 245 | 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 |
| 246 | 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 |
| 247 | 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 |
| 249 | 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 |
| 250 | 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 |
| 251 | 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 |
| 253 | 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 |
| 254 | 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 |
| 256 | 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 |
| 257 | 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 |
| 259 | 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 |
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