 This is a LibriVox recording, and all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information, more LibriVox recordings, or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. This recording read for you by Perry Clayton. Cats by Robert Lynde. The Champion Cat Show has been hailed at the Crystal Palace, but the Champion Cat was not there. One could not possibly allow him to appear in public. He is for show, but not in a cage. He does not compete because he is above competition. You know this as well as I. Probably you possess him. I certainly do. This is the supreme test of a cat's excellence, the test of possession. One does not say you should see Brailsford's cat, or you should see Addick's cat, or you should see Sharp's cat, but you should see our cat. There is nothing we are more egoistic about, not even children, than about cats. I have heard a man, for lack of anything better to boast about, boasting that his cat eats cheese. In anyone else's cat it would have seemed an inferior habit and only worth mentioning to the servant as a warning. But because the cat happens to be his cat, this man talks about its vice excitedly among women as though it were an accomplishment. It is seldom that we hear a cat publicly reproached with guilt by anyone above a cook. He is not permitted to steal from our own larder. But if he visits the next door house by stealth and returns over the wall with a dover soul in his jaws, we really cannot help laughing. We are a little nervous at first, and our mirth is tinged with pity at the thought of the probably elderly and dispeptic gentleman who had his lunchen filched away almost from under his nose. If we were quite sure that it was from number fourteen and not from number nine, or number eleven, that the fish had been stolen, we might conceivably call around to offer to pay for it. But with a cat one is never quite sure. And we cannot call around on all the neighbors and make a general announcement that our cat is a thief. In any case, the next move lies with the wrongs neighbor. As day follows day and there is no sign of his irate and murder-bent figure advancing up the path, we recover our mental balance and begin to see the cat's exploit in a new light. We do not yet extol it on moral grounds, but undoubtedly the more we think of it, the deeper becomes our admiration. Of the two great heroes of the Greeks we admire one for his valor and the other for his cunning. The epic of the cat is the epic of Odysseus. The old gentleman with the dover soul gradually assumes the aspect of a polyphemous outwitted, outwitted and humiliated to the point of not even being able to throw things at his tormentor. Clever cat! Nobody else's cat could have done such a thing. We should like to celebrate the rape of the dover soul in Latin verse. As for the Achillian sort of prowess, we do not demand it of a cat, but we are proud of it when it exists. There is a pleasure in seeing strange cats fly at his approach, either in single file over the wall, or in the scattered aimlessness of a bursting bomb. Theoretically we hate him to fight, but if he does fight and comes home with a torn ear, we have to summon up all the resources of our finer nature in order not to rejoice on noticing that the cat next door looks as though it has been through a railway accident. I am sorry for the cat next door. I hate him so, and it must be horrible to be hated. But he should not sit on my wall and look at me with yellow eyes. If his eyes were any other color, even the blue that is now said to be the mark of the runaway husband, I feel certain I could just manage to endure him, but they are the sort of yellow eyes that you expect to see looking at you from a hole in the paneling in a novel by Mr. Sax Romer. The only reason why I am not frightened of them is that the cat is so obviously frightened of me. I never did him any injury unless the hate is to injure, but he lowers his head when I appear as though he expected to be guillotined. He does not run away, he merely crouches like a guilty thing. Perhaps he remembers how often he has stepped delicately over my seed beds, but not so delicately as to leave no mark of ruin among the infant lettuces and the less than infant autumn sprouting broccoli. These things I could forgive him, but it is not easy to forgive him the look in his eyes when he watches a bird at its song. They are ablaze with evil. It becomes a sort of jack-the-ripper at the opera. People tell us that we should not blame cats for this sort of thing, that it is in their nature and so forth. They even suggest that a cat is no more cruel in eating a robin than we are cruel ourselves in eating chicken. This seems to me to be quibbling. In the first place there is an immense difference between a robin and a chicken. In the second place we are willing to share our chicken with the cat. At least we are willing to share the skin and such of the bones as are not required for soup. Besides, a cat is not the same need of delicacies as a human being. It can eat and even digest anything. It can eat the black skin of a filleted place. It can eat the bits of gristle that people leave on the side of their plates. It can eat boiled cod. It can even eat New Zealand mutton. There is no reason why an animal with so undiscriminating a palate should demand songbirds for its food, when even human beings who are fairly unscrupulous eaters have agreed in some measure to abstain from them. On reflection, however, I doubt if it is his appetite for birds that makes the cat with the yellow eyes feel guilty. If you were able to talk to him in his own language and formulate your accusations against him as a bird eater he would probably be merely puzzled and look on you as a crank. If you pursued the argument and compelled him to moralize his position, he would I fancy explain that the birds were very wicked creatures and that their cruelties to the worms and the insects were more than the flesh and blood could stand. He would work himself up into a generous idealization of himself as the guardian of law and order amid the bloody strife of the cabbage patch, the preserver of the balance of nature. If cats were as clever as we, they would compile an atrocity's blue book about worms. Alas, poor thrush, with how bedraggled a reputation you would come through such an exposure. With how honey should tread you would be depicted treading the lawn, sparing neither age nor sex, seizing the infant worm as it puts out its head to take its first bewildered peep at the rolling sun. Cats could write sonnets on such a theme. Then there is the other beautiful potential poem, The Cry of the Snail. How tender-hearted cats are. Their sympathy seems to be all but universal, always on the lookout for an object, ready to extend itself anywhere where it is needed, except as is but human to their victims. Yellow eyes are not. I begin to be persuaded that the cat next door is a noble fellow. It may well be that his look, as I pass, is a look not of fear but of repulsion. He has seen me going out among the worms with a sharp—no, not a very sharp—spade, and regards me as no better than an ogre. If I could only explain to him. But I shall never be able to do so. He could no more appreciate my point of view about worms than I can appreciate his about robins. Luckily we both eat chicken. This may ultimately help us to understand one another. On the other hand, part of the fascination of cats may be due to the fact that it is so difficult to come to an understanding with them. A man talks to a horse or a dog as to an equal. To a cat he has to be deferential, as though it had some sphinx-like quality that baffled him. He cannot order a cat about with the certainty of being obeyed. He cannot be sure that, if he speaks to it, it will even raise its eyes. If it is perfectly comfortable, it will not. A cat is obedient only when it is hungry or when it takes the fancy. It may be a parasite, but it is never a servant. The dog does your bidding, but you do the cats. At the same time the contrast between the cat and the dog has often been exaggerated by dog lovers. They tell you stories of dogs that remained with their dead masters, as though there were no fidelity in cats. It was only the other day, however, that the newspapers gave an account of a cat that remained with the body of its murdered mistress in the most faithful tradition of the dogs. I know again of cats who will go out for a walk with a human fellow creature as dogs do. I have frequently seen a lady walking across Hampstead Heath with a cat in train. When you go for a walk with a dog, however, the dog protects you. When you go for a walk with a cat, you feel that you are protecting the cat. It is strange that the cat should have imposed the myth of its helplessness upon us. It is an animal with an almost boundless capacity for self-help. It can jump up walls. It can climb trees. It can run, as the proverb says, like greased lightning. It is armed like an African chief, yet it has contrived to make itself a pampered pet so that we are alarmed if it attempts to follow us out of the gate into a world of dogs and only feel happy when it is purring, rolling on its back and purring as we rub its atom's apple by the fireside. There is nothing that gives a greater sense of comfort than the purring of a cat. It is the most flattering music in nature. One feels as one listens like a humble lover in a bad novel, who says, you do then like me a little bit, after all? The fact that a cat is not utterly miserable in our presence always comes with the freshness and delight of a surprise. The happiness of a crowing baby newly introduced to us may be still more flattering, but a cat will get round people who cannot tolerate babies. It is all the more to be wondered at that a cat, which is such a master of this conversational sort of music, should ever attempt any other. There never was an animal less fit to be a singer. Someone, was it Calper, has said that there are no really ugly voices in nature and that he could imagine that there was something to be said even for the donkeys, Bray. I should have thought that the beautiful voices in nature were few and that most of them could be defended only on the ground of some pleasant association. Humanity, at least, has been unanimous in its condemnation of the cat as part of nature's chorus. Poems have been written in praise of the corn-crack as a singer, but never of the cat. All the associations we have with cats have not accustomed us to that discordant howl. It converts love itself into a torment such as can be found only in the pages of a twentieth century novel. In it we hear the jungle seconded, the beast of dissolution, but not yet civilized. When it rises at night outside the window, we always explain to visitors, no, that's not Peter. That's the cat next door with the yellow eyes. The man who will not defend the honor of his cat cannot be trusted to defend anything. The end of Cats by Robert Linn. This recording read for you by Perry Clayton. The Celebration of Intellect by Ralph Weldo Amerson. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Reading by Philip Weichselbaum. I cannot consent to wonder from the duties of this day into the frakers of politics. The brute noise of canon has, I know, a most poetic echo in these days when it is an instrument of freedom and the primal sentiments of humanity. Yet it is but representative and a far of means and servant. But here in the college we are in the presence of the constituency and the principle itself. Here is or should be the majesty of reason and the creative cause. And it were a compounding of all gradation and reverence to suffer the clash of swords and the boyish drive of passion and the feebleness of military strength to intrude on this sanctity and omnipotence of intellectual law. Against the heroism of soldiers, I set the heroism of scholars, which consists in ignoring the other. You shall not put up in your academy the statue of Caesar or Pompey of Nelson or Wellington of Washington or Napoleon of Garibaldi but of Archimedes of Milton of Newton. Archimedes disdain to apply himself to the useful arts only to the liberal or the causal arts. Hero the king reproached him with his parents studies. Like Thales he was willing to show him that he was quite able in rude matters if he could condescend to them and he conducted the defense of Syracuse against the Romans. Then he returned to his geometry and when the Roman soldier at the sack of Syracuse broke into his study, the philosopher could not rise from his chair in his diagram and took his death without resistance. Michelangelo gave himself to art, despising all meaner pursuits. When the war came to his own city, he lent his genius and defended Florence as long as he was obeyed. Milton congratulates the parliament that, whilst London is besieged and blocked, the Thames infested inroads and excursions round and battle of rumor to be marching up to her walls and suburb trenches, yet then are the people of the greater part more than at other times wholly taken up with the study of highest and most important matters to be performed. They reasoning, reading, inventing, discoursing, even to a rarity and admiration, things not before, discoursed or written, and the fact argues suggests confidence in the grandeur and self-subsistency of the cause of religious liberty which made all material war and impertinence. For either science and literature is a hypocrisy or it is not. If it be, then resign your charter to the legislature, turn your college into barracks and warehouses, and avert the funds of your founders into the stock of a rope walk or a candle factory, a tan yard, or some other undoubted convenience for the surrounding population. But if the intellectual interests be, as I hold, no hypocrisy, but the only reality, then it behooves us to enthrone it, obey it, and give it possession of us and ours to give, among other possessions, the college into its hand, casting down every idol, every pretender, every orry, every dignified blunder that has scrapped interest administration. At this season, the colleges keep their anniversaries and in this country where education is a primary interest, every family has a representative in their halls, a son, a brother, or one of our own kindred is there for his training. But even if we had no son or friend therein, yet the college is part of the community and it is there for us, is training our teachers, civilizers, and inspirers. It is essentially the most radiating and public of agencies, like, but better than, the lighthouse or the alarm bell or the sentinel who fires a signal cannon or the telegraph which speeds the local news over the land. Besides, it deals with the force which it cannot monopolize or confine, cannot give to those who come to it and refuse to those outside. I have no doubt of the force and for me the only question is whether the force is inside. This power which it deals is dear to all. If the colleges were better, if they had any monopoly of it, nay, if they really had it, had the power of imparting valuable thought, creative principles, truths which become powers, thoughts which become talents, if they could cause a mind not profound should become profound, we should all rush to the gates. Instead of contriving inducements to draw students, you would need to set police at the gates to keep order in the inrushing multitude. These are giddy times and you say the college will be deserted. No, never was it so much needed, but I say those were the giddy times which went before these and the new times are the times of reignment, times of trial and times of judgment. Just because the college was false to his trust, because the scholars did not learn and teach, because they were traitors and left their altars and libraries and worship of truth and play the sycophant to presidents and generals and members of congress and gave degrees and literary and social honors to those whom they ought to have rebuked and exposed incurring the contempt of those whom they ought to have put in fear, then the college is suicidal, ceases to be a school, power oozes out of it just as fast as truth does, and instead of overawing the strong and upholding the good, it is a hospital for decayed tutors. This integrity over all partial knowledge and skill, homage to truth, how rare. Few men wish to know how the thing really stands, but is the law of it without reference to persons. Other men are victims of their means. Sanity consists in not being subdued by your means. Two men cannot converse together on any topic without presently finding where each stands in moral judgment, and each learns whether the other's view commands or is commanded by his own. I presently know whether my companion has more candor or less, more hope for men or less, whether his sense of duty is more or less severe and his generosity larger than mine, whether he stands for ideal justice or for a timorous expediency. Society is always idelitrous and exaggerates the merits of those who work to valgrance. But genius may be known by its property. Never was pure valor, and almost, I must say, never pure ability shown in a bad cause, for ambition makes insane. Society is always taken by surprise as any new example of common sense and of simple justice as at a wonderful discovery. Thus at Mr. Rary's mode of taming a horse by kindness or garibaldies emancipation of Italy for Italy's sake, at the introduction of gentleness into insane assailants and of cleanliness and comfort into penitentiaries. A farmer wished to buy an ox. The seller told him how well he had treated the animal. But, said my farmer, I asked the ox and the ox showed me by marks that could not lie that he had been abused. We effect to slide England and Englishmen, but I note that we had a vast self-esteem on the subject of Bunker Hill, Yorktown and New Orleans. We should not think it much to beat Indians or Mexicans, but to beat English. The English newspapers and some writers of reputation disparage America. Meantime, I note that the British people are emigrating hither by thousands, which is a very sincere and apt to be a very seriously considered expression of opinion. The emigration into America of British, as well as of continental people, is the eulogy of America by the most competent and sincere arbiters. The hater of property and of government takes care to have his warranty deed recorded, and the book written against fame and learning has the author's name on the title page. Gentlemen, I too am an American and value practical talent. I love results and hate abortions. I delight in people who can do things. I value talent, perhaps no man more. I value dearly the poet who knows his art so well that, when his voice vibrates, it fills the hero with sympathetic song, just as a powerful note of an organ sets all to you in strings in his neighborhood in a cordoned vibration. The novelist with his Romans, the architect with his palace, the composer with a score. I wish you to be eloquent, to grasp the bolt and to hurl it home to the mark. I wish to see that Mirabeau, who knows how to seize the heartstrings of the people and drive their hands and feet in the way he wishes them to go, to further them with himself, to enchain man so that their will and purpose is an imbalance, and they serve him with the million hands just as implicitly as his own members obey him. But I value it more when it is legitimate, when the talent is in true order, subject to genius, subject to the total and native sentiment of the man, and therefore in harmony with the public sentiment of mankind. Such is the patriotism of Demosthenes, of Patrick Hendry, and of what was best in Cicero and Burke. Not an ingenious special pleading, not the making a plausible case, but strong by the strength of the facts themselves. Then the orator is still one of the audience, perciated by the same reasons which perciate them, not a ventriloquist, not a juggler, not a viperpuller paid to manage the lobby and caucus. In Demosthenes is this realism of genius. He wins his cause honestly, his doctrine is self-reliance. If it please you to note it, my councils to you are not such whereby I should grow great among you, and you become little among the grecians. But they be of that nature as is sometimes not good for me to give, but are always good for you to follow. You gentlemen are selected out of the great multitude of your mates. Out of those who began life with you, set apart through some strong persuasion of your own or of your friends that you were capable of the high privilege of thought. Need enough there is of such a band of priests of intellect and knowledge, and greatest the office and well deserving and well paying the last sacrifices and the highest ability. But I wish this very needless task to urge upon you scholars the claims of thought and learning. The author of the world educates with care the senses and the understanding. Mean are as they think. A certain quantity of power belongs to a certain quantity of truth. And the man who knows any truth not yet discerned by other men is master of all other men, so far is that truth and its wide relations are concerned. Do you suppose that the thunderbolt falls short? Do you imagine that the lie will nourish and work like a truth? The whole battle is fought in a few hands. A little finer order, a larger angle of vision commands centuries of facts and millions of thoughtless people. It reserves all rank. He who discriminates is the father of his father. And yet the world is not saved. With this divine oracle we somehow do not get instructed. Here are still perverse millions full of passion, crime and blood. Here are bad governors and bad subjects. Nay, in the class called intellectual the man are no better than the uninstructed. They use their wit and learning in the service of the devil. There are bad books and false teachers and corrupt judges and in the institutions of education a want of faith in their own cause. Nay, it happens often that the well bred and refined the inhabitants of cities dwelling amidst colleges, churches and scientific museums, lectures, poets, libraries, newspapers and other aid supposed intellectual are more vicious and malignant than the rude country people and need to have the corrupt voting and violence corrected by the cleaner and visor suffragists of poor farmers. The poet does not believe in his poetry. Men are ashamed of their intellect. Instinct is the name for the potential wit, that feeling which each has that what is done by any man or agent is done by the same wit as his. He looks at all men as his representatives and is glad to see that his wit can work at that problem as it ought to be done and better than he could do it. Whether it be to build engineer, carve, paint, sing, heal or compute or play chess or ride or swim, we feel as if one man wrote all the books painted, built in dark ages and we're sure we can do more than ever was done. It was the same mind that built the world. The understanding is the name we give to the low, limited power working to short ends to daily life and house and street. This is the power which the world of men adopt and educate. He's the calculator, he's the merchant, the politician, the worker and the useful. He works by shifts, by compromise, by statute, by bribes. All his activities are to short personal ends and he's apt to be a talker, a boaster, a busybody. Will you let me say to you what I think is the organic law of learning? It is to observe the order, to keep down the talent, to enthrone the instinct. There must be the perpetual rallying and self-recovery. Each talent links itself so fast with self-love and with petty advantage that it loses sight of its obedience, which is beautiful and sets up for itself and makes confusion. Falsehood begins as soon as it disobeys. It works for show and for the shop and the greater it grows, the more is the mischief and misleading so that presently all is wrong. Talent is mistaken for genius, dogma or system for truth. Now the idea of a college is an assembly of such men obedient each to this pure light and drawing from it illumination to that science or art to which his constitution and affections draw him. And the very highest advantage which a young man of good mind can meet is to find such a teacher. No books, no aids, laboratory, apparatus, prizes can compare with this. Here is sympathy. Here is an order that corresponds to that in his own mind and in all sound minds and the hope and impulse imparted. And education is what it should be. A delightful unfolding of the faculties in right order. I could hardly wish it were otherwise, but there is a certain shyness of genius, of free thought, of a master of art in colleges which is as old as the rejection of Molière by the French Academy, of Bentley by the patents of his time and only the other day of ergo. In Oxford the recent rejection of Max Muller. If the truth must be told thought is as rare in colleges as in cities. The necessity of a mechanical system is not to be denied. Young men must be classed and employed not according to the secret needs of each mind but by some available plan that will give weekly and annual results. And a little violence must be done to private genius to accomplish this. Then genius is always its own law and must be a little impatient and rebellious to this rule so that of necessity a certain hostility and jealousy of genius grows up in the masters of routine. And unless by rare good fortune the professor has a generous sympathy with genius and takes care to interpose a certain relief and cherishing and reverence for the wild poet and dawning philosopher he has detected in his classes. That will happen which has happened so often that the best scholar he for whom colleges exist finds himself a stranger and an orphan therein. Just precisely analogous to what befalls in religious societies. In the Romans Spiridion a few years ago we had what it seems was a piece of accurate autobiography. The story of a young saint who comes into a convent for her education and not falling into the system and the little parties in the convent but inspired with an enthusiasm which finds nothing there to feed it. It turns out in a few days that every hand is against this young votary. Piety in a convent accuses everyone from the novice to the abyss. What right have you to be better than your neighbor? Piety comes to be regarded as a spy and rebel. And how often we have had repeated the trials of the young man who made no figure at college because his own methods were new and extraordinary and who only prospered at last because he forsook theirs and took his own. It is true that the university and the church which should be counterbalancing institutions to our great material institutions of trade and of territorial power do not express the sentiment of the popular politics and the popular optimism whatever it be. Harvard College has no vice in Harvard College but State Street votes it down on every ballot. Everything will be permitted there which goes to adorn Boston Wiggism. Is a geology, astronomy, poetry, antiquities, art, rhetoric but that which it exists for to be a fountain of novelties out of heaven, a delfas uttering warning and ravishing oracles to lift and lead mankind. That it shall not be permitted to do or to think of. On the contrary every generosity of thought is suspect and gets a bad name and all the youth come out decrepit citizens not a prophet not a poet not a daemon but is gagged and stifled or driven away. All that is sought in the instruction is drill tutors not inspire us. I conceive that a college should have no mean ambition but should aim at a reverent discipline and invitation of the soul that there if nowhere else in the world genius should find its home. Here imagination should be greeted with the problems in which it delights. The noblest tasks to the muse proposed and the most cordial and honoring rewards. Here the highest duties be urged and enthusiasm for liberty and wisdom should breed enthusiasm and form heroes for the state. The college should hold the profound thought and the church the great heart to which the nation should turn and these two should be counterbalancing to the bad politics and selfish trade. But there is but one institution and not three. The church and the college now take their tone from the city and do not dictate their own. You all well know the downward tendency in literature the facility with which men renounce their youthful aims and say the labor is too severe the price too high for me and they accept the employment of the market. Ah gentlemen it's only a dream of mine and perhaps never will be true but I thought a college was a place not to train talents not to train attorneys and those who say what they please but to adorn genius which only speaks truth and after the way which truth uses namely beauty. A college was to teach you geometry or the lovely laws of space and figure chemistry, botany, zoology, the streaming of thought into form and the precipitation of atoms which nature is. This then is the theory of education the happy meeting of the young soul filled with a desire with the living teacher who has already made the passage from the center forth step by step along the intellectual roads to the theory and practice of special signs. Now if there be genius in the scholar that is a delicate sensibility to the laws of the world and the power to express them again in some new form he's made to find his own way. He will greet joyfully the wise teacher but colleges and teachers are now wise essential to him you will find teachers everywhere. I would have you rely on nature ever wise, omnific, thousand-handed nature equal to teach emergency which can do very well without colleges and if the Latin, Greek, algebra or art were in the parents it will be in the children without being pasted on. If your college and your literature are not felt it is because the truth is not in them. When you say the times the persons are prosaic where's the feudal or the Saracenic or Egyptian architecture where the romantic manners where the Romish or the Calvinistic religion which made a kind of poetry in the air for Milton or Byron or Barzoni but to us it is barren you expose your atheism is a railroad or a shoe factory or an insurance office bank or bakery outside the system and connection of things or further from God than a sheep pasture or a clam bank is chemistry suspended do not the electricities and the imponderable influences play with all their magic undulations do not gravity and polarity keep their unerring watch on a needle and thread on a cobbler's lapstone or a switch man's turntable as on the moon's orbit only bring a deep observer and he will make light of the new shop or old cathedral all one to him or new circumstances that afflict you he will find the circumstances not altered as deep a cloud of mystery on the cause as dazzling a glory on the invincible law is it so important whether a man wears a shoe buckle or ties his shoe lap it with a string bring the inside and he will find as many beauties and heroes and astounding strokes of genius close by him as Shakespeare or Askelos or Dante beheld it wasn't a beggarly heath farm it wasn't a mean country in that burns found his fancy so sprightly you find the times and places mean my friend stretch a few threads over common aeolian harp and put it in your window and listen to what it says of times and the heart of nature i do not think that you will believe that the miracle of nature is less the chemical power worn out watch the breaking morning the enchantments of the sunset if i had young men to teach i should say to them keep the intellect sacred revere it give all to it its oracles counter veil all attention is its acceptable prayer sit low and wait long and know that next to being its minister like Aristotle and perhaps better than that is the profound reception and sympathy without ambition which secularizes and trades it go sit with a hermit in you who knows more than you do you will find life enhanced and doors opened to grander entertainments it all comes easily that he does a snow and vapor heat wind and light power costs nothing to the powerful i should say to them do what you can do he that draws on his own talent cannot be overshadowed or supplanted homage to truth discriminates good and evil power never departs from it our colleges may differ much on the scale of requirements and the examination for admission and the examination for degrees and honors maybe lacks in this college and severe in that and you may find facilities translations syllabuses and tutors here or there to coach you through but it's very certain that an examination is yonder before us and an examining committee that cannot be escaped or deceived that every scholar is to be put fairly on his own powers and must hear the questions proposed and answer them by himself and receive honor or dishonor according to the fidelity shown for the men and women of your time the circle of your friends and employers your conditions the invisible world are the interrogators when the great painter was told by a dober i have painted five pictures which you have made one he replied pingo in eternitatem study for eternity he smiled on me says van helmond and it very good rule to read some lines at least every day that shall not be of the day's occasion or task but of study for eternity i have detained you too long but it is the privilege of the moral sentiment to be every moment new and commanding an old man cannot see the powers of society the institutions the laws and the rich they have lived passing or soon to pass into the hands of you and your contemporaries without the earnest wish that you have caught sight of your high calling your vast possibilities and inspiring duties and of the celebration of intellect by ralph weldo amerson a few parables by artha schopenhauer this is a librivox recording all librivox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit librivox.org in a field of ripening corn i came to a place which had been trampled down by some ruthless foot and as i glanced amongst the countless stalks every one of them alike standing there so erect and bearing the full weight of the ear i saw a multitude of different flowers red and blue and violet how pretty they looked as they grew there so naturally with their little foliage but thought i they are quite useless they bear no fruit they are mere weeds suffered to remain only because there is no getting rid of them and yet but for these flowers there would be nothing to charm the eye in that wilderness of stalks they are emblematic of poetry and art which in civic life so severe but still useful and not without its fruit play the same part as flowers in the corn there are some really beautiful landscapes in the world but the human figures in them are poor and you had better not look at them the fly should be used as the symbol of impertinence and audacity for whilst all other animals shun man more than anything else and run away even before he comes near them the fly lights upon his very nose two china men traveling in europe went to the theater for the first time one of them did nothing but study the machinery and he succeeded in finding out how it was worked the other tried to get at the meaning of the piece in spite of his ignorance of the language here you have the astronomer and the philosopher wisdom which is only theoretical and never put into practice is like a double rose its color and perfume are delightful but it withers away and leaves no seed no rose without a thorn yes but many a thorn without a rose a widespreading apple tree stood in full bloom and behind it a straight fur raised its dark and tapering head look at the thousands of gay blossoms which cover me everywhere said the apple tree what have you to show in comparison dark green needles that is true replied the fur but when winter comes you will be bared of your glory and i shall be as i am now once as i was botanizing under an oak i found amongst a number of other plants of similar height one that was dark in color with tightly closed leaves and a stalk that was very straight and stiff when i touched it it said to me in firm tones let me alone i am not for your collection like these plants to which nature has given only a single year of life i am a little oak so it is with a man whose influence is to last for hundreds of years as a child as a youth often even as a full grown man nay his whole life long he goes about among his fellows looking like them and seemingly as unimportant but let him alone he will not die time will come and bring those who know how to value him the man who goes up in a balloon does not feel as though he were ascending he only sees the earth sinking deeper under him there is a mystery which only those will understand who feel the truth of it your estimation of a man's size will be affected by the distance at which you stand from him but in two entirely opposite ways according as it is his physical or his mental stature that you are considering the one will seem smaller the farther off you move the other greater nature covers all her works with the varnish of beauty like the tender bloom that is breathed as it were on the surface of a peach or a plum painters and poets lay themselves out to take off this varnish to store it up and give it to us to be enjoyed at our leisure we drink deep of this beauty long before we enter upon life itself and when afterwards we come to see the works of nature for ourselves the varnish is gone the artists have used it up and we have enjoyed it in advance thus it is that the world so often appears harsh and devoid of charm nay actually repulsive it were better to leave us to discover the varnish for ourselves this would mean that we should not enjoy it all at once and in large quantities we should have no finished pictures no perfect poems but we should look at all things in that genial and pleasing light in which even now a child of nature sometimes sees them someone who has not anticipated his aesthetic pleasures by the help of art or taken the charms of life too early the cathedral in my house is so shut in by the houses that are built around about it that there is no one spot from which you can see it as a whole this is symbolic of everything great or beautiful in the world it ought to exist for its own sake alone but before very long it is misused to serve alien ends people come from all directions wanting to find in its support and maintenance for themselves they stand in the way and spoil its effect to be sure there is nothing surprising in this for in a world of need and imperfection everything is seized upon which can be used to satisfy want nothing is exempt from this service no not even those very things which arise only when need and want are for a moment lost sight of the beautiful and the true sought for their own sakes this is especially illustrated and corroborated in the case of institutions whether great or small wealthy or poor founded no matter in what century or in what land to maintain and advance human knowledge and generally to afford help to those intellectual efforts which ennoble the race wherever these institutions may be it is not long before people sneak up to them under the pretense of wishing to further those special ends while they are really led on by the desire to secure the emoluments which have been left for their furtherance and thus to satisfy certain course and brutal instincts of their own thus it is that we come to have so many charlatans in every branch of knowledge the charlatan takes very different shapes according to circumstances but at bottom he is a man who cares nothing about knowledge for its own sake and only strives to gain the semblance of it that he may use it for his own personal ends which are always selfish and material every hero is a samson the strong man succumbs to the intrigues of the weak and the many and if in the end he loses all patience he crushes both them and himself or he is like gulliver at liliput overwhelmed by an enormous number of little men a mother gave her children esops fables to read in the hope of educating and improving their minds but they very soon brought the book back and the eldest wise beyond his years delivered himself as follows this is no book for us it's much too childish and stupid you can't make us believe that foxes and wolves and ravens are able to talk we've got beyond stories of that kind in these young hopefuls you have the enlightened rationalists of the future a number of porcupines huddled together for warmth on a cold day in winter but as they began to prick one another with their quills they were obliged to disperse however the cold drove them together again when just the same thing happened at last after many turns of huddling and dispersing they discovered that they would be best off by remaining at a little distance from one another in the same way the need of society drives the human porcupines together only to be mutually repelled by the many prickly and disagreeable qualities of their nature the moderate distance which they had last discovered to be the only tolerable condition of intercourse is the code of politeness and fine manners and those who transgress it are roughly told in the English phrase to keep their distance by this arrangement the mutual need of warmth is only very moderately satisfied but then people do not get pricked a man who has some heat in himself prefers to remain outside where he will neither prick other people nor get pricked himself end of a few parables by Arthur Schopenhauer read by Andrew Macbeth for more information or to volunteer please visit if we could first know where we are and whether we are tending we could better judge what to do and how to do it we are now far into the fifth year since a policy was initiated with the avowed object and confident promise of putting an end to slavery agitation under the operation of that policy that agitation not only has not ceased but has constantly augmented and my opinion it will not cease until a crisis shall have been reached and passed a house divided against itself cannot stand I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free I do not expect the union to be dissolved I do not expect the house to fall but I do expect that it will cease to be divided it will become all one thing or all the other either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction or its advocates will push it forward till it shall become like a lawful in all the states old as well as new north as well as south have we no tendency to the latter condition let anyone who doubts carefully contemplate that now almost complete legal combination piece of machinery so to speak compounded of the Nebraska doctrine and the Dred Scott decision put this and that together and we have another nice little niche which we may air long see filled with another supreme court decision declaring that the constitution of the United States does not permit a state to exclude slavery from its limits and this may especially be expected if the doctrine of care not whether slavery be voted down or voted up shall gain upon the public mind sufficiently to give promise that such decision can be maintained when made such a decision is all that slavery now lacks of being a like lawful in all the states welcome or unwelcome such decision is probably coming and will soon be upon us unless the power of the present political dynasty shall be met and overthrown we shall lie down pleasantly dreaming that the people of Missouri are on the verge of making their state free and we shall awake to the reality instead that the supreme court has made Illinois a slave state to meet and overthrow that dynasty is the work before all those who would prevent that consummation that is what we have to do how can we best do it there are those who denounce us openly to their own friends and yet whisper to us softly that senator Douglas is the aptest instrument there is with which to affect that object they wish us to infer all from the fact that he now has a little quarrel with the present head of the dynasty and that he has regularly voted with us on a single point upon which he and we have never differed they remind us that he is a great man and that the largest of us are very small ones let this be granted but a living dog is better than a dead lion judge Douglas if not a dead lion for this work is at least a caged and toothless one how can he oppose the advance of slavery he does not care anything about it his valid mission is impressing the public heart to care nothing about it a leading Douglas democratic newspaper thinks Douglas's superior talent will be needed to resist the revival of the African slave trade does Douglas believe in effort to revive that trade is approaching he has not said so does he really think so but if it is how can you resist it for years he has labored to prove it a sacred right of white men to take Negro slaves into new territories can he possibly show that this is less a sacred right to buy them where they can be bought cheapest and unquestionably they can be bought cheaper in Africa than in Virginia he has done all in his power to reduce the whole question of slavery to one of a mere right of property and as such how can he oppose the foreign slave trade how can he refuse that trade and that property shall be perfectly free unless he does it as a protection to the home protection and as the home producers will probably ask the protection he will be wholly without the ground of opposition Senator Douglas holds we know that the man may rightfully be wiser today than he was yesterday that he may rightfully change when he finds himself wrong but can we for that reason run ahead and affirm that he will make any particular change of which he himself has given no intimation can we safely base our action upon any such vague inference now as ever I wish not to misrepresent Judge Douglas's position question his motives or do ought that can be personally offensive to him whenever if ever he and we can come together on a principle so that our cause may have assistance from his great ability I hope to have interposed no adventitious obstacle but clearly he is not now with us he does not pretend to be he does not promise ever to be our cause then must be entrusted to and conducted by its own undead friends those whose hands are free whose hearts are in the work who do care for the result two years ago the Republicans of the nation mustered over 1,300,000 strong we did this under the single impulse of resistance to a common danger with every external circumstance against us of strange discordant and even hostile elements we gathered from the four winds and formed and fought to battle through under the constant hot fire of a disciplined proud and pampered enemy did we brave all then to falter now now when that same enemy is wavering this severed and belligerent the result is not doubtful we shall not fail if we strand firm we shall not fail wise counseled may accelerate or mistakes delay it but sooner or later the victory is sure to come end of The House Divided Against Itself Speech by Abraham Lincoln read by Cody Logan please visit liberfox.org read by Betsy Bush in Marquette, Michigan April 2008 How to Make a Shoe by John Parker Headley Shoemakers are known both far and wide as men who always cut up side horse sometimes also cow leather to meet the changes in the weather sheep and goats are often slain both unite to make it plain that sheep is used for lining nice when goat alone would not suffice just so with calf as well as kid some use these linen lined and think it quite the best for those who feel themselves refined refined or not we think it true our feet need some protection to do whatever they have to do we make our own selection select at all times the best we can both of shoemakers as well as shoes this is much the better plan and learns us how to choose introduction the author of the book in hand having passed through the various scenes through which he would accompany his readers was prompted to make this offering to the craft and the public in order to relieve his mind of the thoughts had upon the subject of making shoes as well as to contribute something of a literary character which in the broad sense of possibilities may become useful as a textbook or family book for those who may feel interested in making or wearing shoes and perhaps lead to something better realizing the imperfections and shortcomings of the human family to some extent at least no claim beyond that which you are disposed to put upon it is held so that any communication will be gladly received and noted this opportunity is also taken to express thanks for some valuable suggestions from the U.S. Bureau of Education and others concerning the publication of this little volume and in its present shape you are invited to read and make the best use of it you can author the subject seated on a chair one knee the other to rest has his measure taken fair the foot at ease is best the artist views the foot and straight way takes the length by measuring it from heel to toe his size brings content from 12 to 18 inches long this stick has many sizes three to the inch is now our song subject to compromises some feet have long toes behind in the language of the craft these are not so hard to find and off to us Ben Waft our artist here will best succeed if a little head he can measure for out of this comes very much to make the feet a treasure next around the heel a strap we bring to the center of the curve a leather or linen strap is used and don't affect the nerve the marks on this and inch represents also fractions of inch preserved when made complete it then presents an appearance well deserved around the heel I've already said but that is not quite so for around in part and through instead will make it more the go now let us here make up our minds if this trade we would study that the craft is subject to many fines if the subject gets very muddy with strap in hand the in step measure be sure you get it right for at this place some have a treasure which prompts them off to fight a little lump we will it now call not knowing the exact name of it nor let our strap the least bit fall but measure just above it when we've done this and done quite well another move will follow which takes us nearly on the ball and brings us from the hollow from the hollow now we've just come out with strap in hand to take the measure neat near on the ball so that our fits won't shake if they should shake the remedy comes a false soul we do make to please our subjects at their homes the souls we there do take onward now the way we press and move along just so until we reach the part well known to be the toe the toe this is the place of which folks do talk if there is any pressure because they cannot easy walk the shoe we missed the measure just below the ball across the toes is where we next are found for there is nothing worn like shoes when used upon the ground from here we feel like soaring higher and soon get at the ankle which must be fit to suit the buyer thus avoiding any wrangle the ankle reached we then with care measure neat and true if anything is noticed there will surely be the shoe that notice is just what we want from that we get our living and if we make a miss on that it might be passed for giving from toe to ankle we have come with an uncertain height and with the measures we've put down we'll now add that right to have the height right is our aim some like shoes high some low but to have them fit is all the same and this we try to show some in one way some in another these measures have been taken until we have them all together we should not try to shape them to work now by our measure marked will be our constant aim a pattern must be cut to start with that is plain but planer still the shoe will be from the pattern we shall cut because we think you will all agree what's opened should be shut before our eyes the patterns come the shapes are clearly seen a vamp and quarter with a tongue worked just in between a stiffening of soul has found its way and asks that it be shown in order at some future day its use might be made known the parts you see stand thus alone but have a close relation because these parts must all be shown to keep their proper station one part not seen in shape the same is cut and called the lining upon which each quarter must be placed will not stop here defining but show in this cut if you please the lining a little larger with the quarter past on it smooth if not there'll come a charger the vamp also has been changed only one half appears the cause of which can be explained in less time than number years when we the lower corners take and match them well in fact the center we at once do make which guides the following act the act of uniting quarter and vamp with paste or cement for sewing is done with care as in this cut the fitness of things is showing the center mark on the vamp will use to get the quarters placed best by putting the vamp upon the two one half inch above the rest one end is reached but not the last this end from flax or cotton is made by some men very fast if the flax is not too rotten the work which we have now passed through could all be done by standing having a board to cut upon and one the paste commanding but now we wish the scene to change and begin the ending act which comes first to him who would arrange the threads indeed intact we roll the thread upon our knee to untwist and break with ease and place the cords one two and three so that the points are formed if you please by having the points one below the other the thread kept free from a knot we will avoid whatever there is to bother while the past may be forgot we will let that be just as it may if wrong we'll try and mend it for surely there will come a day when after all we'll send it the figure now shows us a how to twist it hard and harder when one side is twisted hard enough we simply take the other and do the same thing over again so that the threads are worked together before the ends are entirely free one thing around us lingers we take the thread three or two in one around our left hand fingers a large round all is just the thing to do what we call milling two or three trips are sure to bring from fingers to foot the filling now our thread is very smooth but we try to make it smoother by using a piece of cloth to rub when done free all together something now is sought that sticks commonly known as wax and often one gets in a fix when he finds it with the tax but wax not tax is what we want to make our thread quite nice we catch it in the middle and to the end wax thrice each time waxing briskly not stopping on the way for if we do we'll miss it and perhaps we'll have to say our wax should be in season soft wax in winter use hard wax in summer reason holding together our shoes a fine point now we're about to make this point should be waxed better so that the bristle we may take shall stick like the stamp of a letter we'll stop here about the thread to take a little whistle until we find a pair to suit then begin to bristle the bristles with care have been selected in keeping with the thread in this case we feel protected because the hog is dead from Russia we are told the best bristles come but cannot tell you why the hairs upon our hogs at home are not so good to buy the union of thread and bristles now will keep us to our text for from this you'll no doubt see what is coming next the bristle is split a little or halfway in the left hand has its place between the finger and thumb to play an important part in the race one half or the four finger you see held in place by the next the thread and bristle both agree to be thus placed is best do not split but roll it on some have said and done by waxing the bristle where the other is split and continued from sun to sun now either way to start will do as much depends on twisting the hairy part is left for you to make sort of wisting back to the scene from once we came with this end in place to hasten make a hole quite through the thread and point pass through and fasten so much about the bristle said no doubt you'll think it strange that needles are not used instead some have tried the change they may be used with good effect and sewing through and through but when we used a crooked all the bristle stands by true one more remark about the end we thus have kept in view to find the middle is the thing now left for us to do not very hard but easy quite in the left hand even joints the right hand holding the other end this fills up all the points another change in things takes place this time the clamps appear between the knees they run their race and hold the upper dear the vamp and quarters as they were pasted are seen now in their place the vamp extending above the clamps with the quarters easy to trace begin to sew at extreme end put left hand bristle first in across the vamp our sewing extend to rows that may be seen this nicely done just change a little the position is clearly seen when we have this quarter stitched near the back say half inch in between pull through one thread and tie it tight on the inside to be left begin to sew the other quarter close at the vamp is right sew to the back and then begin another row up the front so to the top will be no sin but the doing of what is want these rows half an inch apart will serve the present state because now we have a splendid start and getting on first rate then down the front on the other side to the vamp we sure to go never allow your work to slide but take it out just so the front is sewed the back is not but it will be very soon this must never be forgot as it takes up part of the room the outsides together at the back are seen as we are about to sew a little strip put in between to make it stronger grow down to the bottom will sew the way until it is complete then trim the seam and rub it well with a bone found on the seat you will observe the back is changed the linings are together this can be quite well arranged by whipping down this leather either whipping over and over or through and through just as the case may be neither way is very new as we may clearly see but we should do it and rub down flat for now the time has come when we have had enough of that and our upper is near done the upper has now it's right side out right side out with care a little stitching at the top of the back will make it look quite fair we stopped stitching you remember well before we reached the back when on the quarters we did dwell and left a vacant back this track now is filled up well yet we do hold it fast knowing that a time will come to put it on the last before that time has reached however the eyelets bear in mind should each be put in proper place so that the holes we find will let the strings pass easily through when punched and set in straight we have now the upper for our shoe do try and make the mate this upper completed by the past has made it much a treasure for we must also have a last and fit it up to measure since we have kept our seat so long a change may rest our back so act the bench will take our stand close by our friend the jack the bailey jack is the name of this one screwed down upon the post for general use it will not miss but serve our end the most lasts are made of many woods of ash of oak and maple well seasoned is the stock of goods some kinds are very staple some are made with iron plates to clinch the screw or nail but when we would a peg shoe make to use these plates would fail made also for men and boys women and girls for each has on this art a special claim their feet to train and teach to dwell here longer would not do the last we wants in the hand we'll measure the same as we did the foot and thus our trade command the length you know is measured first two sizes added on will make the toe so comfortable we should like to sing a song the hill we reach in perfect order and leave the measure neat some shoes are made which look much broader when put upon the feet the instep now we see again and measure as before one half inch off will answer us no less and not much more for if we do we are apt to find the place where shoes do pinch across the ball we're now inclined still measuring by the inch this is at times a tender spot bunions develop there and when they do tis not forgot we may be air so fair when quarter size we leave off here and on our way we go traveling on without a fear until we reach the toe another quarter we would say at this point we may drop for we are now quite far away from the ankle and the top but further yet we are bound to go the bottom must be reached where soles are made and often saved though the saver be impeached the last we put upon a side of white or red sole leather and mark with knife or pencil wide the parts of soul together the parts are known each one defined inner and outer soul a middle one when we are kind lifts and shank piece make the whole the inner soul on the last is put the pegs just where you see keep soul where it belongs in order to agree the edges beveled with heel to heel the mark across the breast shows us when and where we may take a little rest the upper straight upon the last with the seams appearing right the stiffening smooth just at the back will draw upon our sight this should be done when we begin to draw the upper over so that the last in all its parts shall have a proper cover draw steady until we have it close at the heel and at the toe if these parts should be too loose it would nearly spoil the shoe draw steady or you'll make a crack which will there remain perhaps may cause us to go back and do it over again the upper in the way described drawn gently at the toe we hold it down with our left thumb while a peg we try make go on either side of the toe now work and in the same way fasten the upper down upon the soul to the heel we now must fasten let the upper at the seam have now a secure tack the stiffening all straight in between the lining and the back be sure you get the lining smooth the part inside the shoe if it is not you may some time have a thing to make you blue now put the shoe upon the bench in the way shown in the cut and with a string and button use care to close the front we no doubt now do see the thing taking on a shape which in the end will surely bring us clear out of the scrape the shoe is now placed on the jack a hole for the pin in the last serves to keep the same intact while the toe piece holds it fast now at the breast draw over outside close upon the sole take your time for something's gained while filling up the hole the all you see should not be large in lasting use small pegs just drive them through the inner sole no danger of your legs we will now note the difference the inside shank is longer if we would last it very smooth we must pull all the stronger the thumbs at this are very clever when their part is nicely played serving as a splendid lever while working in the shade we are now at the inside ball be careful not to scratch it when in position we are found we are more apt to catch it when this we've caught and feel safe to leave for the other side we'll find the heel where the toe has been by this we must abide everything quite in its place the future for us yet let's last the upper all around till at the toe we get still using all in pincer hands alternating endly for at this post we've taken stand to grow up very friendly the toe has crimps some in the heel the first is more important because the toe is always seen if rough becomes discordant these crimps are made from left to right and right to left we go then scallop them when to be pegged not so when it we sew the shank piece in the bottom filled with crimps cut as we said already for the middle sole which forms an even bed on which we lay the outer sole the thing we look for next is molded near the upper close and comes quite near our text the middle sole will make us have a better understanding and help protect our feet from frost while we the trade commanding a strap is used around the foot the shoe upon the knee to mold the sole as we have said these parts should all agree when molded good edge full from last trim the sole prepared then make a line for pegs to go for in this we have shared we too our old friend jack make haste with our all and hammer bright begin to peg on the line we've marked six to the inch is right two rows around just in between each other they are put use them long enough to go clear through but save them from the foot the all hand picks up the pegs the hammer hand now takes between forefinger and the thumb and for the hole it makes by repeating this we soon shall have our work ready for a lift but first smooth pegs and trim heel seat or will move along to swift the first lift on will leave it full making the center level with our knife in hand not very dull we are prepared to bevel in this way the heel is built one lift upon the other pegging each will add no guilt but save our subject bother piece by piece until we stop at the proper height a solid piece used for the top will make it finish right nails are driven both iron and steel around the top in mind and on the outside some prefer a few more nails to find hammer solid both heel and sole level as it can be whittle the heel down to a size close to the nails you'll see the heel shave is a tool so good to smooth the heel up nice for when around it you have gone its work will here suffice cut down the breast make it square sandpaper it if you please then change position very fair and done with perfect ease take out the welt with a knife to suit do not cut the upper this same thing is done to the boot and neither has to suffer these tools are bought in stores known to the craft as findings some are here from foreign shores which serve us as a binding a small knife take and trim the edge from the heel around the toe down to the heel on the other side our shoe begins to show the bottom buffed all but the top sandpaper all now we think just mark a place across the shank to be blackened well with the ink the bottom in this shape has come and looks as if we've parted but that's not so as we well know we are nearer than when we started the ink when burnished with hot kit a little heel ball is the thing to use so that it will be fit to put upon a king our jack and company seen again the last time for the present to part perhaps will give us pain perhaps be very pleasant a burnisher for the heel behold use bristly when we finish for this tail is nearly told its parts seem to diminish many parts have made the hole some parts are much affected but when the parts are whole in one they do become respected the end is reached we trust all safe after quite a travel though the road was rough from place to place the thread did not unravel JP H jr end of how to make a shoe by john parker headley this is a LibriVax recording all LibriVax recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVax.org this reading by Todd Cutler a meditation upon a broomstick by Jonathan Swift this single stick which you now behold in gloriously lying in that neglected corner I once knew in a flourishing state in a forest it was full of sap full of leaves and full of bows but now in vain does the busy art of man pretend to vie with nature by tying that withered bundle of twigs to its sapless trunk tis now at best but the reverse of what it was a tree turned upside down the branches on the earth and the root in the air tis now handled by every dirty wench condemned to do her drudgery and by a capricious kind of fate destined to make other things clean and be nasty itself at length worn to the stumps in the service of the maids tis either thrown out of doors or condemned to the last use of kindling a fire when I beheld this I sighed and said within myself surely mortal man is a broomstick nature sent him into the world strong and lusty in a thriving condition wearing his own hair on his head the proper branches of this reasoning vegetable till the axe of intemperance has lopped off his green bows and left him a withered trunk he then flies to art and puts on a periwig valuing himself upon an unnatural bundle of hairs all covered with powder that never grew on his head but now should this our broomstick pretend to enter the scene proud of those birch and spoils that never bore and all covered with dust though it be the sweepings of the finest ladies chamber we should be apt to ridicule and despise its vanity partial judges that we are of our own excellencies and other men's defaults but a broomstick perhaps you will say is an emblem of a tree standing on its head and pray what is man but a topsy-turvy creature his animal faculties perpetually mounted on his rational his head where his heels should be groveling on the earth and yet with all his faults he sets up to be a universal reformer and corrector of abuses a remover of grievances rakes into every sluts corner of nature bringing hidden corruptions to the light and raises a mighty dust where there was none before sharing deeply all the while in the very same pollutions he pretends to sweep away his last days are spent in slavery to women and generally the least deserving till worn to the stumps like his brother Beesum he is either kicked out of doors or made use of to kindle flames for others to warm themselves by that was a meditation upon a broomstick by Jonathan Swift read by Todd Cutler Morals of Chess by Benjamin Franklin this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to a volunteer please visit LibriVox.org reading by Philip Weichselbaum Playing at chess is the most ancient and most universal game known among men for its original is beyond the memory of history and it has for numerous ages been the amusement of all the civilized nations of Asia the Persians the Indians and the Chinese Europe has headed above a thousand years the Spaniards have spread it over their part of America and it begins lately to make its appearance in these states it is so interesting in itself as to not need the view of gain to induce engaging in it and thence it is never played for money those therefore who have leisure for such diversions cannot find one that is more innocent and the following piece written with a view to correct among a few young friends some little improprieties and the practice of it shoes at the same time that it may in its effects on the mind be not merely innocent but advantageous to the vanquished as well as the victor the game of chess is not merely an idle amusement several valuable qualities of the mind useful in the course of human life are to be acquired or strengthened by it so as to become habits ready on all occasions for life is a kind of chess in which we have often points to gain and competitors or adversaries to contend with and in which there is a vast variety of good and ill events that are in some degree the effects of prudence or the want of it by playing chess then we may learn first foresight which looks a little into futurity and considers the consequences that may attend an action for this continually occurring to the player if I move this piece what will be the advantage of my new situation what use can my adversary make of it to annoy me what other moves can I make to support it and to defend myself from his attacks second circumspection which surveys the whole chess board or scene of action the relations of the several pieces and situations the dangers they are respectively exposed to the several possibilities of their aiding each other the probabilities that the adversary may take this or that move and attack this or the other piece and what different means can be used to avoid his stroke or turn its consequences against him third caution not to make our moves too hastily this habit is best acquired by observing strictly the laws of the game such as if you touch a piece you must move it somewhere if you set it down you must let it stand and it is therefore best that these rules should be observed as the game thereby becomes more the image of human life and particularly of war in which if you have unconsciously put yourself into a bad and dangerous position you cannot obtain your enemy's leave to withdraw your troops and place them more securely but you must abide all the consequences of your rashness and lastly we learn by chess the habit of not being discouraged by present bad appearances in the state of error affairs the habit of hoping for a favorable change and that of persevering in the search of resources the game is so full of events there is such a variety of turns in it the fortune of it is so subject to sudden vicissitudes and one so frequently after long contemplation discovers the means of extricating oneself from a supposed insurmountable difficulty that one is encouraged to continue the contest to the last in hopes of victory by our own skill or at least giving a stalemate by the negligence of our adversary and whoever considers what in chess he often sees instances of that particular pieces of success are apt to produce presumption and its consequent inattention by which the last may be recovered will learn not to be too much discouraged by the present success of his adversary nor to despair of final good fortune upon every little check he receives in pursuit of it that we may therefore be induced more frequently to choose this beneficial amusement in preference to others which are not attended with the same advantages every circumstance which may increase the pleasure of it should be regarded and every action or word that is unfair disrespectful or that in any way may give uneasiness should be avoided as contrary to the immediate intention of both the players which is to pass the time agreeably therefore first if it is agreed to play according to the strict rules then those rules are to be exactly observed by both parties and should not be insisted on for one side while deviated from by the other for this is not equitable secondly if it is agreed not to observe the rules exactly but one party demands indulgences he should then be as willing to allow them to the other thirdly no false move should ever be made to extricate yourself out of a difficulty or to gain an advantage there can be no pleasure in playing with a person once detected in such unfair practice fourthly if your adversary is long in playing you ought not to hurry him or express any uneasiness at his delay you should not sing or whistle nor look at your watch or take up a book to read nor make a tapping with your feet on the floor with your fingers on the table nor do anything that may disturb his attention for all these things displease and they do not show your skill in playing but your craftiness or your rudeness fifthly you ought not to endeavor to amuse and deceive your adversary by pretending to have made bad moves and saying that you have now lost the game in order to make him secure and careless and inattentive to your schemes for this is fraud and deceit not skill in the game sixthly you must not when you have gained a victory use any triumphant or insulting expression nor show too much pleasure but endeavor to console your adversary and make him less dissatisfied with himself but every kind of civil expression that may be used with truth such as you understand the game better than I but you're a little inattentive or you play too fast or you had the best of the game but something happened to divert your thoughts and that turned it in my favor seventhly if your spectator while others play observe the most perfect silence for if you give advice you offend both parties him against whom you give it because it may cause the loss of his game him in whose favor you give it because though it be good and he follows it he loses the pleasure he might have had if you had permitted him to think until it had occurred to himself even after a move or moves you must not by replacing the pieces show how it might have been placed better for that displeases and may occasion disputes and doubts about the true situation all talking to the players lessons or diverts their attention and is therefore unpleasing nor should you give the least hint to either party by any kind of noise or motion if you do you're unworthy to be a spectator if you have a mind to exercise a shoe your judgment do it in playing your own game when you have an opportunity not in criticizing or meddling with or counseling the play of others lastly if the game is not to be played rigorously according to the rules above mentioned then moderate your desire of victory over your adversary and be pleased with one over yourself snatch not eagerly at every advantage offered by his unskillfulness or inattention but point out to him kindly that by such a move he places or leaves a peace and danger and unsupported that by another he will put his king in a perilous situation etc by this generous civility so opposite to the unfairness above forbidden you may indeed happen to lose the game to your opponent but you will win what is better his esteem his respect and his affection together with the silent approbation and good will of impartial spectators and of morals of chess by benjamin franklin night and moonlight by henry david thorough this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to a volunteer please visit LibriVox.org reading by philip weichselbaum chancing to take a memorable walk by moonlight some years ago i resolved to take more such walks and make acquaintance with another side of nature i have done so according to pliny there is a stone in arabia called selenites wherein is a white which increases and decreases with the moon my journal for the last year or two has been selenitic in this sense is not the midnight like central africa to most of us are we not tempted to explore it to penetrate the shores of its lake chud and discover the sources of its nile perchance the mountains of the moon who knows what fertility and beauty moral and natural are there to be found in the mountains of the moon in the central africa of the night there is where all niles have their hidden heads the expeditions up the nile as yet extend but to the cataracts or perchance to the mouth of the white nile but it is the black nile that concerns us i shall be a benefactor if i conquer some realms from the night if i report to the gazettes anything transpiring about us and that season worthy of their attention if i can show men that there is some beauty awake while they are asleep if i add to the domains of poetry night is certainly more novel and less profane than day i soon discovered that it was acquainted only with its complexion and as for the moon i had seen her only as it were through a crevice in a shutter occasionally why not walk a little way in her light suppose you attend to the suggestions which the moon makes for one month commonly in vain would it not be very different from anything in literature or religion but why not study the Sanskrit what if one moon has come and gone with its world of poetry its weird teachings its irracular suggestions so divine a creature afraid it with hints for me and i have not used her one moon gone by unnoticed i think it was dr. chalmers who said criticizing colleridge that for his part he wanted ideas which he could see all around and not such as he must look at a way up in the heavens such a man one would say would never look at the moon because she never turns her other side to us the light which comes from ideas which have their orbit as distant from the earth and which is no less cheering and enlightening to the benighted traveler than that of the moon and stars is naturally reproached or nicknamed as moonshine by such their moonshine are they well then do your night traveling where there is no moon to light you but i will be thankful for the light that reaches me from the star of least magnitude stars are lesser or greater only as they appear to us so i will be thankful that i see so much as one side of a celestial idea one side of the rainbow and the sunset sky main talk glibly enough about moonshine as if they knew its qualities very well and despised them as owls my talk of sunshine none of your sunshine but this word commonly means merely something which they do not understand which they are a bed and asleep to however much it may be worth their while to be up and awake to it it must be allowed that the light of the moon sufficient though it is for the pensive walker that not disproportionate to the inner light we have is very inferior in quality and intensity to that of the sun but the moon is not to be judged alone by the quantity of light she sends to us but also by her influence on the earth and its inhabitants the moon gravitates toward the earth and the earth reciprocally towards the moon the poet who walks by moonlight is conscious of a tide in his thought but is to be referred to lunar influence i will endeavor to separate the tide in my thoughts from the current distractions of the day i would warn my heroes that they must not try my thoughts by a daylight standard but endeavor to realize that i speak out of the night all depends on your point of view in drake's collection of voyages vaver says of some albinos among the indians of the arian they are quite white but their whiteness is like that of a horse quite different from the fair or pale european as they have not the least tincture of a blush or sanguine complexion them their eyebrows are milk white as is likewise the hair of their heads which is very fine they seldom go abroad in the daytime the sun being disagreeable to them and causing their eyes which are weak and pouring to water especially if it shines towards them yet they see very well when moonlight from which we call them moonlight neither in our thoughts in these moonlight walks me things is there the least tincture of a blush or sanguine complexion but we are intellectually and morally albinos children of indimion such is the effect of conversing much with the moon i complain of arctic voyagers that they do not enough reminders of the constant peculiar dreariness of the scenery and the perpetual twilight of the arctic night so he whose theme is moonlight though he may find it difficult must as it were illustrated with the light of the moon alone many men walk by day few walk by night it is a very different season take a july night for instance about 10 o'clock when man is asleep and today fairly forgotten the beauty of moonlight is seen over lonely pastures where cattle are silently feeding on all sides novelties present themselves instead of the sun there are the moon and stars instead of the wood fresh there is the whip or will instead of butterflies and the meadows fireflies wind sparks a fire who would have believed it what kind of cool deliberate life dwells in those dewy abodes associated with the spark of fire so man has fire in his eyes or blood or brain instead of singing birds the half-throttled note of the cuckoo flying over the croaking of frogs and the intense dream of crickets but above all the wonderful trunk of the bullfrog ringing from main to Georgia the potato vines stand upright the corn grows at pace the bushes loom the grain fields are boundless on our open river terraces once cultivated by the indian they appear to occupy the ground like an army their heads nodding in the breeze small trees and shrubs are seen in the midst of a realm despite inundation the shadows of rocks and trees and shrubs and hills are more conspicuous than the objects themselves the slightest irregularities in the ground are revealed by the shadows and what the feet find comparatively smooth appears rough and diversified in consequence for the same reason the whole landscape is more variegated and picturesque than by day the smallest recesses in the rocks or dim and cavernous the ferns in the wood appear of tropical size the sweet fern and indigo and overgrown wood paths wet you with you up to your middle the leaves of the shrub oak are shining as if a liquid were flowing over and the pools seen through the trees are as full of light as the sky the light of the day takes refuge in the bosoms as the piranha says of the ocean all white objects are more remarkable than by day a distant cliff looks like a phosphorescent space on hillside the woods are heavy and dark nature slumbers you see the moonlight reflected from particular stumps in the recesses of the forest as if she selected what to shine on these small fractions of her light remind one of the plant called moon seed as if the moon were sowing it in such places in the night the eyes are partly closed to retire into the hand other senses take the lead the walker is guided as well by the sense of smell every plant and field and forest amidst its odor now swamp pink and the meadow and tansy and the road and there is the peculiar dry scent of corn which has begun to show its tassels the sense is both of hearing and smelling or more alert we hear the tinkling of rills which we never detected before from time to time high up on the sides of hills you pass through a stratum of warm air a blast which has come up from the sultry plains of noon it tells the day of sunny noontide hours and banks of the laborer wiping his bro and the bee humming amid flowers it is an air in which work has been done which men have breathed it circulates about from wood side to hillside like a dog that has lost its master now that the sun is gone the rocks retain all night the warmth of the sun which they have absorbed and so does the sand if you dig a few inches into it you find a warm bed you lie on your back on a rock and a pasture on the top of some bare hill at midnight and speculate on the height of the starry canopy the stars of the jewels of the night and perchance surpass anything which day has to show a companion with whom I was sailing one very windy but bright moonlight night when the stars were few and faint thought that a man could get along with them though he was considerably reduced in a circumstances that they were a kind of bread and cheese that never failed no wonder that there have been astrologers that some have conceived that they were personally related to particular stars Debertas as translated by Sylvester says he will not believe that the great architect with all these fires the heavenly arches decked only for show and with these glistering shields to make poor shepherds watching in the fields he'll not believe that the least flower which pranks our garden borders or our common banks and the least stone that in her warming lab or mother earth doth covetiously wrap had some peculiar virtue of its own and that the glorious stars of heaven have none and sir Walter rally well says the stars are instruments of far greater use than to give an obscure light and for man to gaze on after sunset and he quotes botanists as affirming that they are significant but not efficient and also augustine as saying deus regid inferioria corpora persuperioria god rules the bannies below by those above but best of all is this which another writer has expressed best sapiens adjuvabit opus astrorum kemat modum agricola terrainaturan a wise man assisted the work of the stars as the husband man helped the nature of the soil it is not concerned men were asleep in their beds but it is very important to the traveler whether the moon shines brightly or is obscured it is not easy to realize the serene joy of all the earth when she commences to shine unobstructed lee unless you have often been abroad alone in moonlight nights she seems to be waging continual war with the clouds on your behalf yet we fancy the clouds to be her foes also she comes on magnifying her dangers by her light revealing displaying them and all their hugeness and blackness then suddenly casts them behind into the light concealed and goes her way triumphant through a small space of clear sky in short the moon traversing or appearing to traverse the small clouds which lie in her way now obscured by them now easily dissipating and shining through them makes the drama of the moonlight night to all watchers and night travelers sailors speak of it as the moon eating up the clouds the traveler all alone the moon all alone except for its sympathy overcoming with incessant victory whole squadrons of clouds above the forests and lakes and hills when she's obscured he so sympathizes with her that he could whip a dog for her relief as indians do and when she enters on a clear field of great extent in the heavens and shines unobstructed lee he's glad and when she has fought her way through all the squadron of her foes and rides majestic in a clear sky unscathed and there are no more any obstructions in her path he cheerfully and confidently pursues his way and rejoices in his heart and the cricket also seems to express joy in its song how insupportable would be the days if the night with its dew and darkness did not come to restore the drooping world as the shades begin to gather around us our primeval instincts are aroused and we steal forth from the layers like the inhabitants of the jungle in search of those silent and brooding thoughts which are the natural prey of the intellect Richter says that the earth is every day overspread with the veil of night for the same reason as the cages of birds are darkened namely that we may the more readily apprehend the higher harmonies of thought in the hush and quiet of darkness thoughts which day turns into smoke and mist stand about us in the night as light and flames even as the column which fluctuates above the crater of vizuvius and the daytime appears a pillar of cloud but by night a pillar of fire there are nights in this climate of such serene and majestic beauty so medicinal and fertilizing to the spirit that me thinks a sensitive nature would not devote them to oblivion and perhaps there's no man but would be better and wiser for spanning them out of doors though he should sleep all the next day to pay for it should sleep an endymion sleep as the ancients expressed it nights which warrant the grecian epithet embrosial when as in the land of gula the atmosphere is charged with eerie fragrance and with music and we take our repose and have our dreams awake when the moon not secondary to the sun gives us his blaze again void of its flame and sheds a softer day now through the passing cloud she seems to stoop now up the pure gerulian rides sublime dayana still hunts in the new england sky in heaven queen she's among the spheres she mistress like makes all things to be pure eternity in her off change she bears she beauty is by her the fair endure time verse her nod she death his chariot guide mortality below her orb is placed by her the virtues of the star stone slide by her as virtue's perfect image cast the hindu's compared the moon to a saintly being who has reached the last stage of bodily existence great restorer of antiquity great enchanter in a mild night when the harvest or hunter's moon shines unobstructedly the houses in our village whatever architect they may have had by day the knodge only a master the village street is done as wild as the forest new and old things are confounded i know not whether i'm sitting on the ruins of a wall or on the material which is to compose a new one nature is an instructed and impartial teacher spreading no crude opinions and flattering none she will be neither radical nor conservative consider the moonlight so civil yet so savage the light is more proportionate to our knowledge than that of the day it is no more desky and ordinary nights than our mind's habitual atmosphere and the moonlight is as bright as our most illuminated moments are in such a light let me abroad remain till morning breaks and all's confused again of what significance the light of day if it is not the reflection of an inward dawn to what purpose is the veal of night withdrawn with the morning reveals nothing to the soul it is merely garish and glaring when ashen in his address the sun exclaims where his darkness it's dwelling where is the cavernous home of the stars when there quickly follows their steps pursuing them like a hunter in the sky though climbing the lofty hills they descending on barren mountains who does not in his thoughts accompany the stars to their cavernous home descending with them on barren mountains nevertheless even by night the sky's blue and not black for we see through the shadow of the earth into the distant atmosphere of day where the sunbeams are reveling and of night and moonlight by Henry David Thoreau