When I Knew Stephen Crane by Willa Cather It was, I think, in the spring of ’94 that a slender, narrow-chested fellow in a shabby grey suit, with a soft felt hat pulled low over his eyes, sauntered into the office of the managing editor of the Nebraska State Journal and introduced himself as Stephen […]
Classic Articles on Writing
On the Duty of Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau
On the Duty of Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau I heartily accept the motto,—”That government is best which governs least”; and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which also I believe,—”That government is best which governs not at all”; […]
Andrew Lang Letter To Jane Austen After Her Death
Andrew Lang Letter To Jane Austen After Her Death by Andrew Lang Madam,—If to the enjoyments of your present state be lacking a view of the minor infirmities or foibles of men, I cannot but think (were the thought permitted) that your pleasures are yet incomplete. Moreover, it is certain that a woman of parts […]
PLYMOUTH ROCK AND THE PILGRIMS by Mark Twain
PLYMOUTH ROCK AND THE PILGRIMS by Mark Twain ADDRESS AT THE FIRST ANNUAL DINNER, N. E. SOCIETY, PHILADELPHIA, DECEMBER 22, 1881 On calling upon Mr. Clemens to make response, President Rollins said: “This sentiment has been assigned to one who was never exactly born in New England, nor, perhaps, were any of his ancestors. […]
Experience by Ralph Waldo Emerson
Experience by Ralph Waldo Emerson WHERE do we find ourselves? In a series of which we do not know the extremes, and believe that it has none. We wake and find ourselves on a stair; there are stairs below us, which we seem to have ascended; there are stairs above us, many a one, which […]
THE SPIRITS OF WERWOLVES by Elliott O’Donnell
IT seems that there is a disposition in certain minds to associate lycanthropy with the doctrine of the transmigration of souls. A brief examination of the latter will, however, suffice to show there is very little analogy between the two. Transmigration of souls, a metempsychosis, deals solely with the passing of the soul after death […]
To The Dead Edgar Allan Poe by Andrew Lang
by Andrew Lang Sir,—Your English readers, better acquainted with your poems and romances than with your criticisms, have long wondered at the indefatigable hatred which pursues your memory. You, who knew the men, will not marvel that certain microbes of letters, the survivors of your own generation, still harass your name with their malevolence, while […]
The Literature of Rome by H. P. Lovecraft
The centre of our studies, the goal of our thoughts, the point to which all paths lead and the point from which all paths start again, is to be found in Rome and her abiding power.—Freeman. Few students of mankind, if truly impartial, can fail to select as the greatest of human institutions that mighty […]
WALT WHITMAN by John Jay Chapman
It would be an ill turn for an essay-writer to destroy Walt Whitman,—for he was discovered by the essayists, and but for them his notoriety would have been postponed for fifty years. He is the mare’s nest of “American Literature,” and scarce a contributor to The Saturday Review but has at one time or another […]
NIGHT AND MOONLIGHT by Henry D. Thoreau
NIGHT AND MOONLIGHT by Henry D. Thoreau Chancing to take a memorable walk by moonlight some years ago, I resolved to take more such walks, and make acquaintance with another side of nature: I have done so. According to Pliny, there is a stone in Arabia called Selenites, “wherein is a white, which increases and […]
AN AUTUMN EFFECT by Robert Louis Stevenson (1875)
AN AUTUMN EFFECT by Robert Louis Stevenson (1875) A country rapidly passed through under favourable auspices may leave upon us a unity of impression that would only be disturbed and dissipated if we stayed longer. Clear vision goes with the quick foot. Things fall for us into a sort of natural perspective when we see […]
By Emerson’s Grave by Walt Whitman
May 6, ’82.—We stand by Emerson’s new-made grave without sadness—indeed a solemn joy and faith, almost hauteur—our soul-benison no mere “Warrior, rest, thy task is done,” for one beyond the warriors of the world lies surely symboll’d here. A just man, poised on himself, all-loving, all-inclosing, and sane and clear as the sun. Nor does […]
THE UNKNOWN BRAIN by Elliott O’Donnell
THE UNKNOWN BRAIN by Elliott O’Donnell Whether all that constitutes man’s spiritual nature, that is to say, ALL his mind, is inseparably amalgamated with the whitish mass of soft matter enclosed in his cranium and called his brain, is a question that must, one supposes, be ever open to debate. One knows that this whitish […]
The American Army (1891) by Rudyard Kipling
I SHOULD very much like to deliver a dissertation on the American army and the possibilities of its extension. You see, it is such a beautiful little army, and the dear people don’t quite understand what to do with it. The theory is that it is an instructional nucleus round which the militia of the […]
OLD POETS by Walt Whitman
Poetry (I am clear) is eligible of something far more ripen’d and ample, our lands and pending days, than it has yet produced from any utterance old or new. Modern or new poetry, too, (viewing or challenging it with severe criticism,) is largely a-void—while the very cognizance, or even suspicion of that void, and the […]