Nonfiction

The subject, the authorship, and the style of this book combine to secure for it the immediate attention of American readers. In our own case, this attention has deepened into hearty interest and sympathy; and we are so confident that such will be the result in every mind, that we the more cheerfully resign ourselves to the necessity which renders a full and fair review of this little book an impossible thing for us...

I have always had a perverse inclination to the other side of the question, especially if there was little to be said for it. One hates to be smothered even under truth. What if all the world, as well as our senses, say that the shield is silver? One wants the more to creep round to that solitary, dark corner yonder, and look out of the eyes of the one poor ghost who says that it is gold...

“I am not educated, and therefore cannot teach; and I am no seamstress. Yet I must live. Is there no way for me out of starvation and idleness? Is there no door open for me by that of the kitchen, and that other which I cannot name?”...

The mention of eatmint gave me a hint as to my next adventure. Half an hour’s ride on one of the suburban railways brought me out into the open country, into the neighborhood of brick kilns, and summer gartens, and a towering wooden edifice, which served as a beacon to all
the country round, styled Varden’s Varieties, to which a yellow sign-board bade us welcome,
with promise of clams, catfish, game in season, and music...

The Academies of Design, Professor B---- told me, were not designed to furnish a prompt means of livelihood to needy women. The course of study properly occupied from three to four years...

The first among living wood-engravers gave me his testimony as to the suitability of his art for women—testimony more valuable because he has been for many years both sanguine and active in devising ways for their help, and is now teaching engraving to a large class of women. He speaks of it as an art peculiarily suited to a woman, because it requires taste, delicacy of touch, and patience; and because, especially, it can be pursued at home...

A woman ought always to be allowed as many more words as she pleases: so I make no apology for coming again to say a forgotten word or two, before bidding a good-by to the friendly faces gathered about this hospitable Hearth and Home...

I ought to apologize for bringing in an old acquaintance with such a flourish: for all of you know the Major, and have, very likely helped or been helped by him. You may see him any day just now on Broadway. He always walks as though a crowd a people were waiting for him just at the end of the block...

“Whatever else you leave undone, see Qualla,” urged the friend who had persuaded us to an exploration of the North Carolinian mountains as he helped us aboard the train in Philadelphia. “Ride over some day to Casher’s Valley: you’ll find gigantic bluffs there; and to Waynesville: it is the highest town in the United States. And don’t forget the gorge of the Unaka Range—eighty peaks above six thousand feet in sight at once. But above all, see Qualla—see Qualla!”...

AN odd chance enables me to lift the curtain on a scene a century and three years old, and from the glimpses of real life in dumb show on the stage you can make tragedies and romances enough...

The discussion of the negro problem in Northern and Southern review last winter, it is
true, showed us the subject from widely different points of view. But if any Northerner, living quietly at home, surrounded only by white faces, supposes that these pictures of the great
struggle of race in the South has discovered the whole of it to him, he is greatly mistaken...

While John Woolman was still a baby in the poor farm house at Mount Holly, another boy of like spirit, and destined to a noble work, was born in an obscure little hamlet among the Carpathian Mountains...

Every man in business, once or twice a year must take account of stock, to see just where he stands. He has not enough of one article, or has too much of another. In that direction he must show more energy in this, it behooves him to be cautious. It is easily seen how necessary such a frequent searching scrutiny is in trade...

Should the right of suffrage be extended to women, I am very sure that I for one should sit by the fire on election day while my cook and laundress voted. I do not believe that I should be any more conscientious or faithful to my duty in this matter than are the majority of educated American men...

I have read, within the last six days, as many earnest, carefully written papers in leading American and English magazines on the position of woman in the labor-field; if we can call that a position which is described as a desperate, hopeless struggle for a foothold...

THE readers of The Independent have no doubt seen in the daily papers the story of a
workingman named Sillars, an industrious, sober fellow, with a wife and child dependant on him, who, losing his position in the Cellonite works at Arlington, went to Connecticut in search of work. He wandered through the state for two or three weeks with no success, and at last, penniless and starving, was driven to beg a cup of coffee from a farmer’s wife...

The Prince of Wales, it is said, is at the head of a movement to honor the memory of Father Damien, the hero priest of Molokai, by erecting a hospital for lepers in London. There are reported to be about twenty lepers in England; and it is for their comfort and seclusion that the house in to be built as well for the opportunity it will afford to physicians for the scientific study of leprosy...

IS there no way by which the hours of women’s labor in the retail shops can be regulated? I have never joined in the popular lamentations over women’s wrongs, for I know of but few wrongs to which any class of my sex are subject which common-sense, industry and womanliness in the individual will not set right...

MAY I point my meaning by an anecdote? Thirty years ago a young journalist who had been on the staff of a New York newspaper which had pushed itself into notice by its personalities, started a paper in a city in Virginia. A few weeks after his arrival a marriage took place in one of the prominent families of the town. The young editor was invited to it...

THE Philadelphia papers, a few days ago, contained a notice of the death, at one of the hospitals, of F. Jennings Crute, a reporter on one of the newspapers of that city. To the great majority of the unthinking public, the word reporter suggests an under-bred, prying fellow, whose delight it is to spy into the private affairs of his neighbors...

There can surely be little doubt that women will occupy a much wider space in American literature during the next thirty years than they have done hitherto. Chatauqan circles, University Extension lectures, the innumerable literary, scientific, religious and charitable classes and clubs which young women are forming from Murray Hill[3] to Montana ranches, are all doing a quickening work...

We come to New England because we find that the health of our family is much better during the rest of the year after our stay at Marion. Besides, my husband thinks the fishing here is unsurpassed and he delights in the natural beauties round-about...

I wish to call the attention of the readers of THE INDEPENDENT to a pitiful story recently told by Mr. William O’Brien in a letter to the English papers, and to their comments upon it.
The story is that of Achill, a little rocky island on the west coast of Ireland, so barren that it would with difficulty furnish food for three or four hundred people, but upon which about five thousand are now starving...

The recent Negro Conference at Tuskegee was especially useful, as it set before the public more clearly than ever before the black actor who is playing his part with the others on the national stage; and, what was more important, showed him the full meaning of his part and how he ought to play it...

A RESIDENT Jingo in every house? That prescription which the BAZAR gave the other day is the missing word for which we all have been waiting. “A Resident Jingo.” Somebody at each breakfast table to blow the trumpet with no uncertain sound. Somebody who is sure—who never had a doubt—that war is the only way for us to do God’s work just now...

Recently there have come to knowledge certain remarkable facts in a woman’s life worthy consideration by every earnest Christian. I will state them here briefly without comment. The case is not one in which any attempt at pathos or argument would be fitting...

OF all the gods on Olympus Mars is always the most popular figure. Especially is he heroic in the eyes of a nation which is just about to set the crown of Imperialism on its brows, to gird a sword on its thighs and drive another nation into civilization and Christianity—at the point of the bayonet...

WE Americans have found a short cut to truth, which we use on every occasion. No matter what the subject in doubt may be, we vote on it. The majority, we assume, must be right. The Romans and Greeks paid some deference to the wisdom of the gods, who were supposed to give their ideas on doubtful matters to men through the flight of birds or the entrails of beasts...

AN English naturalist, who kept close company with the birds and reptiles for many years, used to say: “There’s no limit to the queerness of beasts! The longer you live with them the less you know about them!”...

Mr. W. E. Burghardt Du Bois has lately finished his series of advisory lectures to the negroes. Just now our poor black brother is the most advised man in Christendom. First of all, he has as counselor Booker T. Washington, whom God has sent to pull him out of the slough as surely as he sent Moses to bring his people to the promised land...

WE were delayed one day last summer at the toll gate on a lonely road in the Virginia mountains. The son of the gatekeeper at the moment came hurrying across the field. “I’ve got the job, father!” he shouted, waving his hat. “Sixteen dollars a month!”...

I SUPPOSE that the only way for us to find out the men among us who dwell in the uplands of life, and breathe habitually a purer air than that of the market place, is to note those, who, when the chance comes for a noble deed--great or small--do it, simply and naturally, without any preparation...

IT was about ten years ago when I first saw Mary Carr. She was a woman of forty, healthy, resolute, keen of eye and sharp of tongue; with a firm belief in herself and very little belief in any other person or thing. She always had lived in a wideawake village in Iowa, and now had come to "the East" to make her fortune...

CURIOUS dramatic stories are told of some of the women in this country who were forced to go out into the market place to earn their living and who made of the venture a notable success. One or two of these cases, it seems to me, give a useful hint to other women who must work for their living but who have not yet decided what trade or business to undertake...

One of our millionaires who began life as a poor lad and did not succeed until middle age is said to enjoy the fun and luxury which his money brings him like a hot-headed boy. He goes to balls and the play incessantly; he buys pictures, yachts, automobiles, and exults and rejoices loudly in each, until he becomes a bore to his blasé companions...

Now it is our friend—the country’s friend—Edward Everett Hale who has robbed us of a popular belief: Daniel Webster was not a drunkard! In the twenty-six years in which Mr. Hale “knew him intimately he saw him thousands of times, read thousands of his letters, ran in and out of his house constantly, and never once saw him under the influence of liquor.”...

The vehement controversy has been going on lately between some of our contemporaries as to the relative cost of living in different American cities. The newly-married couple with a small income are the objects of this anxious solicitude. Details of information are lavishly poured out upon them...

The murders and uncleaner crimes which fill the papers every day are so much alike that they are apt to pall on us. Considered as literature the heroes are too common-place. We are surprised to find that the man who banged his friend’s head to a jelly the other day, or put strychnia in his coffee, bought his clothes from our own tailor...

DECORATION DAY, as we have it now, is one of those popular customs which, like Jonah's gourd, have grown so fast and into such huge proportions that we have almost forgotten why the seeds of them were planted in the first place...

The American is ready enough to make any change in his habits of conduct, provided he originates it himself. But he willingly borrows no custom from foreigners. Now, there are many customs which he might borrow with profit...

The great Controller of the world does not often gratify the dramatic sense of his creatures with a finer scene than that of the death of the Pope the other day. A man who was one of the foremost rulers of the world, who had compelled the respect of all nations by his wisdom and kindliness, a man whom millions of men regarded as the Vicegerent of God on earth, after nearly a century of busy work fought with death hour after hour for weeks—to stay—to keep to his work...

In the great chalk deposits of France were found, a few years ago, two skeletons, probably the oldest in the world. At the back of a cave lay the bones of a woman who had been done to death by a huge stone mallet; while lying across the entrance was the skeleton of a gigantic man who still held in the bones of his hand the weapon with which he had killed her...

Is the free library, as it is now conducted, an unmixed blessing to any community?
Most of our readers will be ready to send up a howl of derision in answer to such a question. We Americans usually are like Chinamen—any printed book is a kind of holy fetich to us...

Vale, Madame Humbert! The world, always keen-sighted and just in the long run, gave her something very like applause the other day as she went out of its sight into the darkness of her prison cell...

Many years ago I knew of a woman whose life was as improbable as the plot of a dime romance. Her story was whispered about until it came to the ears of Mrs. Oliphant,[1] who promptly made a novel—one of her best—out of it...

Did you ever notice a shrewd farmer as he goes over his fields, how he takes account of every trifling sign to find out their condition? Here he picks up a bit of earth and smells it and tastes it; there he notes a new kind of weed that is making headway; these trees are puny and diseased, those are rank with lichen...

Every day the Weather Bureau gives us a report in the news papers of the condition of the temperature all over the country, and also a forecast of the weather to come, the sunshine, storms, heat and cold which we may reasonably expect in a given time. This daily account and prophecy are founded, as everybody knows, on countless minute reports of weather conditions sent in daily to Washington from every quarter of the United States...