By trying we can easily learn to endure adversity. Another man's, I mean. —Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar. You soon find your long-ago dreams of India rising in a sort of vague and luscious moonlight above the horizon-rim of your opaque consciousness, and softly lighting up a thousand forgotten details which were parts of a vision that had once been vivid to you when you were a boy, and steeped your spirit in tales of the East. The... more...

CHAPTER I. THE COUNTRY. We had sailed in a southeasternly direction from New York twelve days when we rounded Cape St. Roque, the easternmost point of South America. A line drawn due north from this point would pass through the Atlantic midway between Europe and America. If we had sailed directly south we should have touched the western instead of the eastern coast, for the reason that practically the entire continent of South America lies east... more...

CHAPTER I EARLIEST MEMORIES Preamble—The house where I was born—The singular Ombu tree—A tree without a name—The plain—The ghost of a murdered slave—Our playmate, the old sheep-dog—A first riding-lesson—The cattle: an evening scene—My mother—Captain Scott—The hermit and his awful penance. It was never my intention to write an autobiography. Since I took to writing in my middle... more...

A man may have no bad habits and have worse. —Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar. The starting point of this lecturing-trip around the world was Paris, where we had been living a year or two. We sailed for America, and there made certain preparations. This took but little time. Two members of my family elected to go with me. Also a carbuncle. The dictionary says a carbuncle is a kind of jewel. Humor is out of place in a dictionary. We... more...

It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have those three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either of them. --Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar. From diary: Mr. G. called. I had not seen him since Nauheim, Germany--several years ago; the time that the cholera broke out at Hamburg. We talked of the people we had known there, or had casually met; and G. said: "Do... more...

Let me make the superstitions of a nation and I care not who makes its laws or its songs either. —Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar. Yes, the city of Benares is in effect just a big church, a religious hive, whose every cell is a temple, a shrine or a mosque, and whose every conceivable earthly and heavenly good is procurable under one roof, so to speak—a sort of Army and Navy Stores, theologically stocked. I will make out a little... more...

In the first place God made idiots. This was for practice. Then He made School Boards. —Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar. Suppose we applied no more ingenuity to the instruction of deaf and dumb and blind children than we sometimes apply in our American public schools to the instruction of children who are in possession of all their faculties? The result would be that the deaf and dumb and blind would acquire nothing. They would live and... more...

PREFACE. Although the Journal of a voyage to Brazil, and of a residence of many months in that country, was not written without a view to publication at some time; yet many unforeseen circumstances forced the writer to pause before she committed it to press, and to cancel many pages recording both public and private occurrences. Perhaps there is even yet too much of a personal nature, but what is said is at least honest; and if the writer... more...

PREFACE. This volume is one result of a scientific expedition to the equatorial Andes and the river Amazon. The expedition was made under the auspices of the Smithsonian Institution, and consisted of the following gentlemen besides the writer: Colonel Staunton, of Ingham University, Leroy, N.Y.; F.S. Williams, Esq., of Albany, N.Y.; and Messrs. P.V. Myers and A. Bushnell, of Williams College. We sailed from New York July 1, 1867; and, after... more...

INTRODUCTION "Through Five Republics on Horseback" has all the elements of a great missionary book. It is written by an author who is an eye-witness of practically all that he records, and one who by his explorations and travels has won for himself the title of the "Livingstone of South America." The scenes depicted by the writer and the glimpses into the social, political and religious conditions prevailing in the Republics in the great... more...