| 62 | Author: | Tolstoy, Count Ilya | Add | | Title: | My Last Visit to My Mother | | | Published: | 2000 | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | Description: | WITH all the other appalling news from Russia comes word of the
devastation of the home of Leo Tolstoy and the burning of his
manuscripts. This news is so horrible that I cannot believe it is true.
I cannot believe the people can be so blinded as to attack a helpless
old woman, the widow of the greatest man of Russia, and destroy the
precious relics that have no other value except that of preserving the
memory of this man. | | Similar Items: | Find |
63 | Author: | Twain, Mark, 1835-1910 | Add | | Title: | The Great Revolution in Pitcairn | | | Published: | 2000 | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | Description: | LET me refresh the reader's memory a little. Nearly
a hundred years ago the crew of the British ship
Bounty mutinied, set the captain and his officers adrift
upon the open sea, took possession of the ship, and
sailed southward. They procured wives for themselves
among the natives of Tahiti, then proceeded to a lonely
little rock in mid-Pacific, called Pitcairn's Island,
wrecked the vessel, stripped her of everything that
might be useful to a new colony, and established themselves
on shore. | | Similar Items: | Find |
64 | Author: | Twain, Mark, 1835-1910 | Add | | Title: | Life on the Mississippi | | | Published: | 2000 | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | Description: | THE Mississippi is well worth reading about. It is not a
commonplace river, but on the contrary is in all ways remarkable.
Considering the Missouri its main branch, it is the longest
river in the world—four thousand three hundred miles.
It seems safe to say that it is also the crookedest river in the world,
since in one part of its journey it uses up one thousand three hundred
miles to cover the same ground that the crow would fly over in six
hundred and seventy-five. It discharges three times as much water
as the St. Lawrence, twenty-five times as much as the Rhine,
and three hundred and thirty-eight times as much as the Thames.
No other river has so vast a drainage-basin: it draws its water
supply from twenty-eight States and Territories; from Delaware,
on the Atlantic seaboard, and from all the country between that and Idaho
on the Pacific slope—a spread of forty-five degrees of longitude.
The Mississippi receives and carries to the Gulf water from
fifty-four subordinate rivers that are navigable by steamboats,
and from some hundreds that are navigable by flats and keels.
The area of its drainage-basin is as great as the combined areas
of England, Wales, Scotland, Ireland, France, Spain, Portugal, Germany,
Austria, Italy, and Turkey; and almost all this wide region is fertile;
the Mississippi valley, proper, is exceptionally so. | | Similar Items: | Find |
65 | Author: | Brock: Webbe, John | Add | | Title: | A discourse concerning paper money: in which its principles are laid open; and a method, plain and easy, for
introducing and continuing a plenty, without lessening the present value of it, is demonstrated. / by John Webbe | | | Published: | 2000 | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | Description: | The value of the paper-money of Pennsylvania notwithstanding
the obvious manner of accounting for it, is attributed by many to the
land-security on which it is lent; and in support of this notion, the
following argument, whoever first broached it, has been printed; which I
shall particularly examine; for as it has been generally
adopted, it cannot with decency be condemned in the
lump. It runs thus. As those who take bills out of the
banks in Europe put in money for security, so here we engage
our Land. And as bills issued upon money security are money, so bills
issued upon land security are, in effect, coined land. Now the
Banks of Europe do actually borrow the money lodged
with them, and therefore give their notes as a security for the
repayment. But the paper-money-bank of Pennsylvania, to which
the argument is applied, does not borrow but lend money, and
therefore takes security from the borrowers for the repayment
at the times stipulated. The two cases then, instead of having the
least resemblance, being essentially opposite; it is
impossible that any conclusion drawn from the one should be applicable
to the other. Indeed the bills given by an European bank have
the same power as the silver promised by 'em; because the possessors
have a right to receive, and do also receive on demand the very
sums expressed by such bills. But those of Pennsylvania
cannot, for a like reason, nor for any reason, be considered as
land; for tho' they be lent upon land, yet the possessors have no
right to demand from any man, or any body of men, any land for
'em. | | Similar Items: | Find |
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