It is said that a carpenter building a summer hotel here ... declared that one very clear day he picked out a ship coming into Por...tland Harbor and could distinctly see that its cargo was West Indian rum. A county historian avers that it was probably an optical delusion, the result of looking so often through a glass in common use in those days.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The signs look better. The Father of Waters again goes unvexed to the sea. Thanks to the great North-West for it. Nor yet wholly t...o them.... The job was a great national one.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Civilization does not engross all the virtues of humanity: she has not even her full share of them. They flourish in greater abund...ance and attain greater strength among many barbarous people. The hospitality of the wild Arab, the courage of the North American Indian, and the faithful friendships of some of the Polynesian nations, far surpass any thing of a similar kind among the polished communities of Europe.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It is a mistake to suppose that, in a country where the usual evidences of civilization exist, the condition of a very large body ...of inhabitants may not be as degraded as that of savages. I refer to the degraded poor, not now to the degraded rich. To know this I should not need to look farther than to the shanties which everywhere border our railroads, that last improvement in civilization; where I see in my daily walks human beings living in sties, and all winter with an open door, for the sake of light, without any visible, often imaginable, wood-pile, and the forms of both old and young are permanently contracted by the long habit of shrinking from cold and misery, and the development of all their limbs and faculties is checked.... Such too, to a greater or less extent, is the condition of the operatives of every denomination in England, which is the great workhouse of the world. Or I could refer you to Ireland, which is marked as one of the white or enlightened spots on the map. Contrast the physical condition of the Irish with that of the North American Indian, or the South Sea Islander, or any other savage race before it was degraded by contact with the civilized man. Yet I have no doubt that that people's rulers are as wise as the average of civilized rulers. Their condition only proves what squalidness may consist with civilization.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
She might have been old once and now, miraculously, young again--but with the memory of that other life intact. She seemed to know... the world down there in the dark hall and beyond for what it was. Yet knowing, she still longed to leave this safe, sunlit place at the top of the house for the challenge there.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Then must you speak Of one that loved not wisely but too well;... Of one not easily jealous, but being wrought, Perplexed in the extreme; of one whose hand, Like the base Judean threw a pearl away Richer than all his tribe.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Must we to bed indeed? Well then, Let us arise and go like men,... And face with an undaunted tread The long black passage up to bed.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Break a vase, and the love that reassembles the fragments is stronger than that love which took its symmetry for granted when it w...as whole.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The English language is nobody's special property. It is the property of the imagination: it is the property of the language itsel...f.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »