Old Cambridge

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Macmillan, 1899 - American literature - 203 pages
 

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Page 172 - On how many paths, leading to how many homes where proud Memory does all she can to fill up the fireside gaps with shining shapes, must not men be walking in just such pensive mood as I ? Ah, young heroes, safe in immortal youth as those of Homer, you at least carried your ideal hence untarnished ! It is locked for you beyond moth or rust in the treasurechamber of Death.
Page 84 - Madame Lachapelle in Paris, and if here and there an intrepid woman insists on taking by storm the fortress of medical education, I would have the gate flung open to her, as if it were that of the citadel of Orleans and she were Joan of Arc returning from the field of victory.
Page 96 - We are lonely, very lonely, in these last years. The image which I have used before this in writing to you recurs once more to my thought. We were on deck together as we began the voyage of life two generations ago. A whole generation passed and the succeeding one found us in the cabin, with a goodly number of coevals. Then the craft which held us began going to pieces, until a few of us were left on the raft pieced together of its fragments. And now the raft has at last parted, and you and I are...
Page 79 - Oh, what is Heaven but the fellowship Of minds that each can stand against the world By its own meek and incorruptible will...
Page 5 - You Roxb'ry poets, keep clear of the crime Of missing to give us very good rhime. And you of Dorchester, your verses lengthen, But with the text's own words, you will them strengthen.
Page 33 - ... and Justice Story, three years later, repeated the saying and sought to account for the fact. "So great," said Story, "is the call for talents of all sorts in the active use of professional and other business in America that few of our ablest men have leisure to devote exclusively to literature or the fine arts. . . . This obvious reason will explain why we have so few professional authors, and those not among our ablest men.
Page 105 - Fortune, in a happy moment, provided one in the person of a young countryman, who had come to Spain in search of instruction. He was just from college, full of all the ardent feeling excited by classical pursuits, with health unbroken, hope that was a stranger to disappointment; curiosity which had never yet been fed to satiety. Then he had sunny locks, a fresh complexion, and a clear blue eye, all indications of a joyous temperament.
Page 44 - We are looking abroad and back after a literature. Let us come and live, and know in living a high philosophy and faith ; so shall we find now, here, the elements, and in our own good souls the fire. Of every storied bay and cliff and plain, we will make something infinitely nobler than Salamis or Marathon. This pale Massachusetts sky, this sandy soil and raw wind, all shall nurture us : — " O Nature, less is all of thine, Than are thy borrowings from our human breast.
Page 172 - Ah, young heroes, safe in immortal youth as those of Homer, you at least carried your ideal hence untarnished ! It is locked for you beyond moth or rust in the treasure-chamber of Death. Is not a country, I thought, that has had such as they in it, that could give such as they a brave joy in dying for it, worth something, then...
Page 106 - With the French and Spanish languages I am familiarly conversant, so as to speak them correctly, and write them with as much ease and fluency as I do the English. The Portuguese I read without difficulty. And with regard to my proficiency in the Italian, I have only to say that all at the hotel where I lodge took me for an Italian until I told them I was an American.

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