by Edgar Allan Poe
In speaking of the Poetic Principle, I have no design to be either thorough or profound. While discussing, very much at random, the essentiality of what we call Poetry, my principal purpose will be to cite … Read the rest
Category: Essays
A Letter to the Rising Generation
by Cornelia A. P. Comer
From the dawn of time, one generation has cried reproof and warning to the next, unheeded. ‘I wonder that you would still be talking. Nobody marks you,’ say the young. ‘Did you never hear of … Read the rest
Signs of Progress Among the Negroes
by Booker T. Washington
In addition to the problem of educating eight million negroes in our Southern States and ingrafting them into American citizenship, we now have the additional responsibility, either directly or indirectly, of educating and elevating about eight … Read the rest
The Awakening of the Negro
by Booker T. Washington
When a mere boy, I saw a young colored man, who had spent several years in school, sitting in a common cabin in the South, studying a French grammar. I noted the poverty, the untidiness, the … Read the rest
The Fruits of Industrial Training
by Booker T. Washington
The political, educational, social, and economic evolution through which the South passed during, say, the first fifteen or twenty years after the close of the civil war furnishes one of the most interesting periods that any … Read the rest
Dialogue Between Franklin and the Gout
by Benjamin Franklin
Midnight, 22 October, 1780
FRANKLIN. Eh! Oh! eh! What have I done to merit these cruel sufferings?
GOUT. Many things; you have ate and drank too freely, and too much indulged those legs of yours in their … Read the rest
Poor Richard’s Almanack
by Benjamin Franklin
A sampling of our favorite Franklin quotes, by year of the Almanack in which they were first published:
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The Morals of Chess
by Benjamin Franklin
Playing at Chess, is the most ancient and universal game known among men; for its original is beyond the memory of history, and it has, for numberless ages, been the amusement of all the civilized nations of … Read the rest
Man in the Iron Mask
by Alexandre Dumas
For nearly one hundred years this curious problem has exercised the imagination of writers of fiction–and of drama, and the patience of the learned in history. No subject is more obscure and elusive, and none more attractive … Read the rest
To Chekhov’s Memory
by Aleksandr I. Kuprin
He lived among us….
You remember how, in early childhood, after the long summer holidays, one went back to school. Everything was gray; it was like a barrack; it smelt of fresh paint and putty; one’s … Read the rest