by William Dean Howells
BUT it is mostly my own dreams I talk of, and that will somewhat excuse me for talking of dreams at all. Everyone knows how delightful the dreams are that one dreams one’s self, and how … Read the rest
Category: Essays
War Stops Literature
by William Dean Howells
War stops literature. This is the belief of a man who for more than a quarter of a century has been in the front rank of the world’s novelists, who wrote The Rise of Silas Lapham … Read the rest
John Bull
by Washington Irving
“An old song, made by an aged old pate, Of an old worshipful gentleman who had a great estate, That kept a brave old house at a bountiful rate, And an old porter to relieve the poor … Read the rest
The Mutability of Literature
by Washington Irving
A COLLOQUY IN WESTMINSTER ABBEY
“I know that all beneath the moon decays, And what by mortals in this world is brought, In time’s great period shall return to nought. I know that all the muse’s heavenly … Read the rest
Abraham Lincoln
by Walt Whitman
Glad am I to give—were anything better lacking—even the most brief and shorn testimony of Abraham Lincoln. Everything I heard about him authentically, and every time I saw him (and it was my fortune through 1862 to … Read the rest
Birds Migrating at Midnight
by Walt Whitman
Did you ever chance to hear the midnight flight of birds passing through the air and darkness overhead, in countless armies, changing their early or late summer habitat? It is something not to be forgotten. A friend … Read the rest
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 … Read the rest
The Real War Will Never Get in the Books
by Walt Whitman
And so good-bye to the war. I know not how it may have been, or may be, to others—to me the main interest I found, (and still, on recollection, find,) in the rank and file of the … Read the rest
Two Brothers, One South, One North
by Walt Whitman
May 28-9.—I staid to-night a long time by the bedside of a new patient, a young Baltimorean, aged about 19 years, W. S. P., (2d Maryland, southern,) very feeble, right leg amputated, can’t sleep hardly at all—has … Read the rest
Infographics of African-American Life (1900)
by W.E.B. Du Bois
The following visual displays of demographic data were part of Du Bois’ collection, “The Exhibit of American Negroes” — in which he attempted to show (a) The history of the American Negro. (b) His present condition. … Read the rest