A History of American Literature Since 1870

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Century Company, 1915 - Literary Criticism - 449 pages

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Page 186 - When I heard the learn'd astronomer When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me, When I was shown the charts and...
Page 82 - Mr. Oakhurst received his sentence with philosophic calmness, none the less coolly that he was aware of the hesitation of his judges. He was too much of a gambler not to accept Fate. With him life was at best an uncertain game, and he recognized the usual percentage in favor of the dealer.
Page 101 - Happy, if with my latest breath I may but gasp his name ; Preach him to all, and cry in death, "Behold, behold the Lamb!
Page 51 - Steam-boat a-comin' !" and the scene changes ! The town drunkard stirs, the clerks wake up, a furious clatter of drays follows, every house and store pours out a human contribution, and all in a twinkling the dead town is alive and moving. Drays, carts, men, boys, all go hurrying from many quarters to a common center, the wharf.
Page 173 - To any one dying, thither I speed and twist the knob of the door, Turn the bed-clothes toward the foot of the bed, Let the physician and the priest go home. I seize the descending man and raise him with resistless will, 0 despairer, here is my neck, By God, you shall not go down ! hang your whole weight upon me. 1 dilate you with tremendous. breath, I buoy you up, Every room of the house do I fill with an arm'd force, Lovers of me, bafflers of graves.
Page 146 - I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.
Page 355 - Give a rouse, then, in the Maytime For a life that knows no fear! Turn night-time into daytime With the sunlight of good cheer! For it's always fair weather When good fellows get together With a stein on the table and a good song ringing clear.
Page 51 - ... skids" on the slope of the stone-paved wharf, and the fragrant town drunkard asleep in the shadow of them,- two or three wood flats at the head of the wharf, but nobody to listen to the peaceful lapping of the wavelets against them; the great Mississippi, the majestic, the magnificent Mississippi, rolling its mile- wide tide along, shining in the sun; the dense forest away on the other side,- the "point" above the town, and the "point...
Page 21 - The principal object, then, proposed in these Poems was to choose incidents and situations from common life, and to relate or describe them, throughout, as far as was possible in a selection of language really used by men...
Page 51 - ... texas" deck behind them; the paddle-boxes are gorgeous with a picture or with gilded rays above the boat's name; the boiler deck, the hurricane deck, and the texas deck are fenced and ornamented with clean white railings; there is a flag gallantly flying from the jack-staff; the furnace doors are open and the fires glaring bravely; the upper decks are black with passengers; the captain stands by the big bell, calm, imposing, the envy of all...

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