| | 121 | Author: | Stewart, Calvin | Add | | | Title: | Uncle Josh Weathersby's "Punkin Centre Stories"  | | | | Published: | 1997 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | THE author was born in Virginia, on a little patch of land, so poor
we had to fertilize it to make brick. Our family, while having cast
their fortunes with the South, was not a family ruined by the war; we
did not have anything when the war commenced, and so we held our own. I
secured a common school education, and at the age of twelve I left home,
or rather home left me—things just petered out. I was slush cook on an
Ohio River Packet; check clerk in a stave and heading camp in the knobs
of Tennessee, Virginia and Georgia; I helped lay the track of the M. K.
& T. R. R., and was chambermaid in a livery stable. Made my first
appearance on the stage at the National Theatre in Cincinnati, Ohio, and
have since then chopped cord wood, worked in a coal mine, made cross
ties (and walked them), worked on a farm, taught a district school (made
love to the big girls), run a
threshing machine, cut bands, fed the machine and ran the engine. Have
been a freight and passenger brakeman, fired and ran a locomotive; also
a freight train conductor and check clerk in a freight house; worked on
the section; have been a shot gun messenger for the Wells, Fargo
Company. Have been with a circus, minstrels, farce comedy, burlesque
and dramatic productions; have been with good shows, bad shows, medicine
shows, and worse, and some shows where we had landlords singing in the
chorus. Have played variety houses and vaudeville houses; have slept in
a box car one night, and a swell hotel the next; have been a traveling
salesman (could spin as many yarns as any of them). For the past four
years have made the Uncle Josh stories for the talking machine. The Lord
only knows what next! | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| 122 | Author: | Tarkington, Booth, 1869-1946 | Add | | | Title: | Alice Adams | | | | Published: | 1997 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | THE patient, an old-fashioned man, thought
the nurse made a mistake in keeping both of
the windows open, and her sprightly disregard
of his protests added something to his hatred
of her. Every evening he told her that anybody
with ordinary gumption ought to realize that night
air was bad for the human frame. "The human
frame won't stand everything, Miss Perry,'' he
warned her, resentfully. "Even a child, if it had
just ordinary gumption, ought to know enough not to
let the night air blow on sick people—yes, nor well
people, either! `Keep out of the night air, no matter
how well you feel.' That's what my mother used to
tell me when I was a boy. `Keep out of the night
air, Virgil,' she'd say. `Keep out of the night air.' '' | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| 126 | Author: | Twain, Mark, 1835-1910 | Add | | | Title: | The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County | | | | Published: | 1997 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | I found Simon Wheeler dozing comfortably by the bar-room stove of
the old, dilapidated tavern in the ancient mining camp of Boomerang,
and I noticed that he was fat and bald-headed, and had an expression
of winning gentleness and simplicity upon his tranquil countenance.
He roused up and gave me good-day. I told him a friend of mine had
commissioned me to make some inquiries about a cherished companion
of his boyhood named Leonidas W. Smiley — Rev. Leonidas W. Smiley
— a young minister of the Gospel, who he had heard was at one time
a resident of this village of Boomerang. I added that if Mr. Wheeler
could tell me any thing about this Rev. Leonidas W. Smiley, I would
feel under many obligations to him. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| 127 | Author: | Twain, Mark, 1835-1910 | Add | | | Title: | Is Shakespeare Dead? | | | | Published: | 1997 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | SCATTERED here and there through the stacks of unpublished
manuscript which constitute this formidable Autobiography
and Diary of mine, certain chapters will in some distant future be
found which deal with "Claimants"—claimants historically
notorious: Satan, Claimant; the Golden Calf, Claimant; the Veiled
Prophet of Khorassan, Claimant; Louis XVII., Claimant; William
Shakespeare, Claimant; Arthur Orton, Claimant; Mary Baker G.
Eddy, Claimant
—and the rest of them. Eminent Claimants,
successful Claimants, defeated Claimants, royal Claimants, pleb
Claimants, showy Claimants, shabby Claimants, revered Claimants,
despised Claimants, twinkle starlike here and there and yonder
through the mists of history and legend and tradition—and oh, all
the darling tribe are clothed in mystery and romance, and we read
about them with deep interest and discuss them with loving
sympathy or with rancorous resentment, according to which side
we hitch ourselves to. It has always been so with the human race.
There was never a Claimant that couldn't get a hearing, nor one
that couldn't accumulate a rapturous following, no matter how
flimsy and apparently unauthentic his claim might be. Arthur
Orton's claim that he was the lost Tichborne baronet come to life
again was as flimsy as Mrs.
Eddy's that she wrote Science and
Health from the direct dictation of the Deity; yet in England near
forty years ago Orton had a huge army of devotees and incorrigible
adherents, many of whom remained stubbornly unconvinced after
their fat god had been proven an impostor and jailed as a perjurer,
and to-day Mrs. Eddy's following is not only immense, but is daily
augmenting in numbers and enthusiasm. Orton had many fine and
educated minds among his adherents, Mrs. Eddy has had the like
among hers from the beginning. Her church is as well equipped in
those particulars as is any other church. Claimants can always
count upon a following, it doesn't matter who they are, nor what
they claim, nor whether they come with documents or without. It
was always so. Down out of the long-vanished past, across the
abyss of the ages, if you listen
you can still hear the believing
multitudes shouting for Perkin Warbeck and Lambert Simnel. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| 131 | Author: | Twain, Mark, 1835-1910 | Add | | | Title: | The Story of a Speech | | | | Published: | 1997 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | An address delivered in 1877, and a review of it twenty-nine years
later. The original speech was delivered at a dinner given by the
publishers of The Atlantic Monthly in honor of the seventieth
anniversary of the birth of John Greenleaf Whittier, at the Hotel
Brunswick, Boston, December 17, 1877. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| 133 | Author: | Washington, Booker T. | Add | | | Title: | Negro Progress in Virginia | | | | Published: | 1997 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | THE members of the colored race who live outside of Virginia are
beginning to grow somewhat jealous of the progress which our race is
making in this commonwealth. The Negro race in Virginia is going
forward, in my opinion, in all the fundamental and substantial things of
life, faster than the Negro himself realizes and faster than his white
neighbor realizes. I say this notwithstanding there are many existing
weaknesses and much still to be accomplished. This progress which
Virginia Negroes are now experiencing is owing to two causes. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| 134 | Author: | Washington, Booker T. | Add | | | Title: | Teamwork | | | | Published: | 1997 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | EVERY large and successful business, or other organization, has been
built up by what is called "teamwork," not by one individual, but by a
number of individuals working together. In what I shall attempt to say
tonight, I want to emphasize the importance, in an institution like
this, of people working together with a common end in view. That is
teamwork. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| 136 | Author: | Wiggin, Kate Douglas | Add | | | Title: | Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm | | | | Published: | 1997 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | THE old stage coach was rumbling along
the dusty road that runs from Maplewood
to Riverboro. The day was as warm
as midsummer, though it was only the middle of
May, and Mr. Jeremiah Cobb was favoring the
horses as much as possible, yet never losing sight
of the fact that he carried the mail. The hills were
many, and the reins lay loosely in his hands as he
lolled back in his seat and extended one foot and
leg luxuriously over the dashboard. His brimmed
hat of worn felt was well pulled over his eyes, and
he revolved a quid of tobacco in his left cheek. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
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