There are always two ways of looking at a thing, frequently there are six or seven; but two ways of looking at a London fog are quite enough. When it is thick and yellow in the streets and stings a man's throat and lungs as he breathes it, an awakening in the early morning is either an unearthly and grewsome, or a mysteriously enclosing, secluding, and comfortable thing. If one awakens in a healthy body, and with a clear brain rested by normal sleep and retaining memorie...

Introduction: No answer is given in the Lysis to the question, ?What is Friendship?? any more than in the Charmides to the question, ?What is Temperance?? There are several resemblances in the two Dialogues: the same youthfulness and sense of beauty pervades both of them; they are alike rich in the description of Greek life. The question is again raised of the relation of knowledge to virtue and good, which also recurs in the Laches; and Socrates appears again as the eld...

Introduction: The dates of the birth and death of Tacitus are uncertain, but it is probable that he was born about 54 A.D. and died after 117. He was a contemporary and friend of the younger Pliny, who addressed to him some of his most famous epistles. Tacitus was apparently of the equestrian class, was an advocate by training, and had a reputation as an orator, though none of his speeches has survived. He held a number of important public offices, and married the daught...

INTRODUCTION: Diderot, writing to the Princess Dashkoff in 1771, thus analysed the spirit of his century: Chaque siecle a son esprit qui le caracterise. L'esprit du notre semble etre celui de la liberte. La premiere attaque contre la superstition a ete violente, sans mesure. Une fois que les hommes ont ose d'une maniere quelconque donner l'assaut a la barriere de la religion, cette barriere la plus formidable qui existe comme la plus respectee, il est impossible de s'arr...

Excerpt: THE DONKEY, The PACK, AND THE PACK?SADDLE IN a little place called Le Monastier, in a pleasant highland valley fifteen miles from Le Puy, I spent about a month of fine days. Monastier is notable for the making of lace, for drunkenness, for freedom of language, and for unparalleled political dissension. There are adherents of each of the four French parties?Legitimists, Orleanists, Imperialists, and Republicans?in this little mountain?town; and they all hate, loa...

Foreword: BY THE EDITOR THE Travelling Enthusiast, from whose journals we are presenting another ?fancy?flight in the manner of Jacques Callot,? has apparently not separated the events of his inner life from those of the outside world; in fact we cannot determine where one ends and the other begins. But even if you cannot see this boundary very clearly, dear reader, the Geisterseher may beckon you to his side, and before you are even aware of it, you will be in a strange...

A fast train drew into Albany, on the New York Central, from the West. It was three-thirty of a chill March morning in the first year of peace. A pall of fog lay over the world so heavy that it beaded the face and hands and deposited a fairy diamond dust upon wool. The station lights had the visibility of stars, and like the stars were without refulgence - a pale golden aureola, perhaps three feet in diameter, and beyond, nothing. The few passengers who alighted and the ...

Excerpt: It affords me pleasure to tender my friendly greetings to you on the occasion of your assembling at the seat of Government to enter upon the important duties to which you have been called by the voice of our country?men. The task devolves on me, under a provision of the Constitution, to present to you, as the Federal Legislature of 24 sovereign States and 12,000,000 happy people, a view of our affairs, and to propose such measures as in the discharge of my offic...

Excerpt: There is a faint freshness in the London night as though some strayed reveller of a breeze had left his comrades in the Kentish uplands and had entered the town by stealth. The pavements are a little damp and shiny. Upon one?s ears that at this late hour have become very acute there hits the tap of a remote footfall. Louder and louder grow the taps, filling the whole night. And a black cloaked figure passes by, and goes tapping into the dark. One who has danced ...

Excerpt: ?Ah! madame,? replied the doctor, ?I have some appalling stories in my collection. But each one has its proper hour in a conversation ? you know the pretty jest recorded by Chamfort, and said to the Duc de Fronsac: ?Between your sally and the present moment lie ten bottles of champagne.?? ?But it is two in the morning, and the story of Rosina has prepared us,? said the mistress of the house. ?Tell us, Monsieur Bianchon!? was the cry on every side. The obliging d...

No vices are so hard to eradicate as those which are popularly regarded as virtues. Among these the vice of reading is foremost. That reading trash is a vice is generally conceded; but reading per se — the habit of reading — new as it is, already ranks with such seasoned virtues as thrift, sobriety, early rising and regular exercise. There is, indeed, something peculiarly aggressive in the virtuousness of the sense-of-duty reader. By those who have kept to the humble pat...

Excerpt: Chapter 1. THE SHADOW LISTENS A WEIRD, mellow light pervaded the somber, black?walled room. The glow had a purplish tinge, and its strange rays centered themselves in a single corner, where they reflected the shining surface of a polished tabletop. All was silent in that room. It bore the semblance of a chamber of death; and most mysterious of all was the spectral figure that sat before the table. Clothed in a cloak of jet?black hue, with visage obscured by the ...

THE strangest of journeys! And yet it had begun so well! I, for my part, had never made a voyage that started under better auspices. The Province is a swift and comfortable transatlantic liner, commanded by the most genial of men. The company gathered on board was of a very select character. Acquaintances were formed and amusements organized. We had the delightful feeling of being separated from the rest of the world, reduced to our own devices, as though upon an unknown...

Excerpt: Chapter One. Lakeside was a pleasant little town of five or six thousand inhabitants, and a rather pretty one, too, as towns go in the Far West. It had church accommodations for thirty?five thousand, which is the way of the Far West and the South, where everybody is religious, and where each of the Protestant sects is represented and has a plant of its own. Rank was unknown in Lakeside?unconfessed, anyway; everybody knew everybody and his dog, and a sociable fri...

When Lionel Giles began his translation of Sun Tzu’s ART OF WAR, the work was virtually unknown in Europe. Its introduction to Europe began in 1782 when a French Jesuit Father living in China, Joseph Amiot, acquired a copy of it, and translated it into French. It was not a good translation because, according to Dr. Giles, [I]t contains a great deal that Sun Tzu did not write, and very little indeed of what he did....

Excerpt: VORWORT Das nachstehende Gedicht schrieb ich im diesj„hrigen Monat Januar zu Paris, und die freie Luft des Ortes wehete in manche Strophe weit sch„rfer hinein, als mir eigentlich lieb war. Ich unterlieá nicht, schon gleich zu mildern und auszuscheiden, was mit dem deutschen Klima unvertr„glich schien. Nichtsdestoweniger, als ich das Manuskript im Monat M„rz an meinen Verleger nach Hamburg schickte, wurden mir noch mannigfache Bedenklichkeiten in Erw„gung gestellt.

Excerpt: A friend of mine, who is a man of letters and a philosopher, said to me one day, as if between jest and earnest, ?Fancy! since we last met I have discovered a haunted house in the midst of London.? ?Really haunted,?and by what??ghosts?? ?Well, I can?t answer that question; all I know is this: six weeks ago my wife and I were in search of a furnished apartment. Passing a quiet street, we saw on the window of one of the houses a bill, ?Apartments, Furnished.? The ...

In the beginning, before the heaven and the earth and the sea were created, the great abyss Ginungagap was without form and void, and the spirit of Fimbultyr moved upon the face of the deep, until the ice-cold rivers, the Elivogs, flowing from Niflheim, came in contact with the dazzling flames from Muspelheim. This was before Chaos. And Fimbultyr said: Let the melted drops of vapor quicken into life, and the giant Ymer was born in the midst of Ginungagap. He was not a go...

Excerpt: A great many, who have spent their lives in cities, and have never chanced to come into the country at this season, have never seen this, the flower, or rather the ripe fruit, of the year. I remember riding with one such citizen, who, though a fortnight too late for the most brilliant tints, was taken by surprise, and would not believe that there had been any brighter. He had never heard of this phenomenon before. Not only many in our towns have never witnessed ...

Excerpt: I esteem myself highly honoured in being permitted to dedicate and present my Narrative of the Life and Actions of Captain James Cook to your Majesty. It was owing to your Majesty?s royal patronage and bounty, that this illustrious navigator was enabled to execute those vast undertakings, and to make those extraordinary discoveries, which have contributed so much to the reputation of the British empire, and have reflected such peculiar glory on your Majesty?s re...