THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR Ralph Waldo Emerson An Oration delivered before the Phi Beta Kappa Society, at Cambridge, August 31, 1837 Mr. President and Gentlemen, I greet you on the re-commencement of our literary year. Our anniversary is one of hope, and, perhaps, not enough of labor...

AN ADDRESS by Ralph Waldo Emerson Delivered before the Senior Class in Divinity College, Cambridge, Sunday Evening, July 15, 1838 In this refulgent summer, it has been a luxury to draw the breath of life. The grassurst, the meadow is spotted with fire and gold in the tint of flowers. The air is full of birds, and sweet with the breath of the pine, the balm-of-Gilead, and the new hay...

SISTER CARRIE by Theodore Dreiser Chapter I. THE MAGNET ATTRACTING: A WAIF AMID FORCES When Caroline Meeber boarded the afternoon train for Chicago, her total outfit consisted of a small trunk, a cheap imitation alligator-skin satchel, a small lunch in a paper box, and a yellow leather snap purse, containing her ticket, a scrap of paper with her sister’s address in Van Buren Street, and four dollars in money. It was in August, 1889...

NARRATIVE OF THE LIFE OF FREDERICK DOUGLASS, AN AMERICAN SLAVE. WRITTEN BY HIMSELF PREFACE In the month of August, 1841, I attended an antislavery convention in Nantucket, at which it was my happiness to become acquainted with FREDERICK DOUGLASS, the writer of the following Narrative...

PSYCHOLOGICAL OPERATIONS IN GUERRILLA WARFARE by Tayacn PREFACE Guerrilla warfare is essentially a political war. Therefore, its area of operations exceeds the territorial limits of conventional warfare, to penetrate the political entity itself: the "political animal" that Aristotle defined. In effect,the human being should be considered the priority objective in a political war...

ESSAYS First Series by Ralph Waldo Emerson HISTORY There is no great and no small To the Soul that maketh all: And where it cometh, all things are; And it cometh everywhere. I am owner of the sphere, Of the seven stars and the solar year, Of Caesar’s hand, and Plato’s brain, Of Lord Christ’s heart, and Shakspeare’s strain. ESSAY I History There is one mind common to all individual men...

THE NEW ATLANTIS by FRANCIS BACON. WE sailed from Peru, where we had continued by the space of one whole year, for China and Japan, by the South Sea, taking with us victuals for twelve months; and had good winds from the east, though soft and weak, for five months’ space and more. But then the wind came about, and settled in the west for many days, so as we could make little or no way, and were sometimes in purpose to turn back...

TARZAN of the Apes Edgar Rice Burroughs Chapter 1 Out to Sea I had this story from one who had no business to tell it to me, or to any other. I may credit the seductive influence of an old vintage upon the narrator for the beginning of it, and my own skeptical incredulity during the days that followed for the balance of the strange tale...

Poor Richard Improved 1748 Ben Franklin Kind Reader, The favourable Reception my annual Labours have met with from the Publick these 15 Years past, has engaged me in Gratitude to endeavour some Improvement of my Almanack...

Poor Richard Improved 1749 Wealth and Content are not always Bed-fellows. Wise Men learn by others harms; Fools by their own. On the 7th of this month 1692 died Robert Boyle, Esq; one of the greatest philosophers the last age produced...