Essays Books

Coasting Bohemia

J. Comyns Carr

The papers which compose this volume make no claim to any sort of ordered plan in their composition. They reflect in some measure the varied activities of a life that has been passed in close associat..

Mountain Paths

Maurice Maeterlinck

We shall live henceforward under their laws, which will be more just but not more severe nor more cheerless than ours; for it is a mistake to suppose that the dead love nothing but gloom: they love on..

The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 11

Ambrose Bierce

The greater part of the contents of this volume is published in admirable form by A. M. Robertson, of San Francisco, with the title The Shadow on the Dial and Other Essays. When the prospectus of Mr. ..

Hey Rub-a-dub-dub

Theodore Dreiser

My pride in a sturdy, passive acceptance of things, however, is nearly realized in Vaclav Melka, the happy dispenser of “Vynas, Scnapsas.” He also is frequently to be found leaning in his doorway in s..

The Powder of Sympathy

Christopher Morley

I have christened these soliloquies after dear old Sir Kenelm Digby’s famous nostrum, the Powder of Sympathy. But in spite of its amiable name and properties that powder was not a talcum. Its basis wa..

Woman in the golden ages

Amelia Gere Mason

These essays are limited mainly to the golden ages of Greece, Rome, and the Renaissance, with a brief interlude that serves as a transition from pagan to medieval times. The mantle of the great Italia..

Gleanings from Maeterlinck

Maurice Maeterlinck

In The Blue Bird we are shown that a man cannot die so long as he dwells in the memory of those who loved him. In his latest work Maeterlinck gives to the dead an objective existence. In part each gen..

Unfinished Rainbows, and Other Essays

George Wood Anderson

That is a sweeping promise that is literally fulfilled in nature. All clouds carry rainbows. Most of them are never seen by us because we lack the necessary keenness of vision, or the proper point of ..