The Oxford Book of American Essays

Оглавление

Коллектив авторов. The Oxford Book of American Essays

INTRODUCTION

THE EPHEMERA: AN EMBLEM OF HUMAN LIFE. TO MADAME BRILLON, OF PASSY. BENJAMIN FRANKLIN

THE WHISTLE. TO MADAME BRILLON. BENJAMIN FRANKLIN

DIALOGUE BETWEEN FRANKLIN AND THE GOUT

CONSOLATION FOR THE OLD BACHELOR. FRANCIS HOPKINSON

JOHN BULL. WASHINGTON IRVING

THE MUTABILITY OF LITERATURE. A COLLOQUY IN WESTMINSTER ABBEY. WASHINGTON IRVING

KEAN’S ACTING. RICHARD HENRY DANA

GIFTS. RALPH WALDO EMERSON

USES OF GREAT MEN. RALPH WALDO EMERSON

BUDS AND BIRD-VOICES. NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE

THE PHILOSOPHY OF COMPOSITION. EDGAR ALLAN POE

BREAD AND THE NEWSPAPER. OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES

WALKING. HENRY DAVID THOREAU

ON A CERTAIN CONDESCENSION IN FOREIGNERS5. JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

PREFACE TO "LEAVES OF GRASS" 1855. WALT WHITMAN

AMERICANISM IN LITERATURE. THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON

THACKERAY IN AMERICA. GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS

OUR MARCH TO WASHINGTON. THEODORE WINTHROP. THROUGH THE CITY

PHILADELPHIA

THE "BOSTON"

ANNAPOLIS

WHAT THE MASSACHUSETTS EIGHTH HAD BEEN DOING

OUR MORNING MARCH

ON GUARD WITH HOWITZER NO. TWO

THE BRIDGE

THE NIGHT-MARCH

MORNING

WASHINGTON

CALVIN. A STUDY OF CHARACTER. CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER

FIVE AMERICAN CONTRIBUTIONS TO CIVILIZATION. CHARLES WILLIAM ELIOT

I TALK OF DREAMS. W. D. Howells

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

VII

AN IDYL OF THE HONEY-BEE. JOHN BURROUGHS

CUT-OFF COPPLES’S. CLARENCE KING

THE THÉÂTRE FRANÇAIS. HENRY JAMES

THEOCRITUS ON CAPE COD. HAMILTON WRIGHT MABIE

COLONIALISM IN THE UNITED STATES9. HENRY CABOT LODGE

NEW YORK AFTER PARIS. W. C. Brownell

THE TYRANNY OF THINGS. EDWARD SANDFORD MARTIN

FREE TRADE VS. PROTECTION IN LITERATURE. SAMUEL MCCHORD CROTHERS

DANTE AND THE BOWERY. THEODORE ROOSEVELT

THE REVOLT OF THE UNFIT. NICHOLAS MURRAY BUTLER

ON TRANSLATING THE ODES OF HORACE. W. P. TRENT

Отрывок из книги

YOU may remember, my dear friend, that when we lately spent that happy day in the delightful garden and sweet society of the Moulin Joly, I stopped a little in one of our walks, and stayed some time behind the company. We had been shown numberless skeletons of a kind of little fly, called an ephemera, whose successive generations, we were told, were bred and expired within the day. I happened to see a living company of them on a leaf, who appeared to be engaged in conversation. You know I understand all the inferior animal tongues. My too great application to the study of them is the best excuse I can give for the little progress I have made in your charming language. I listened through curiosity to the discourse of these little creatures; but as they, in their national vivacity, spoke three or four together, I could make but little of their conversation. I found, however, by some broken expressions that I heard now and then, they were disputing warmly on the merit of two foreign musicians, one a cousin, the other a moscheto; in which dispute they spent their time, seemingly as regardless of the shortness of life as if they had been sure of living a month. Happy people! thought I; you are certainly under a wise, just, and mild government, since you have no public grievances to complain of, nor any subject of contention but the perfections and imperfections of foreign music. I turned my head from them to an old gray-headed one, who was single on another leaf, and talking to himself. Being amused with his soliloquy, I put it down in writing, in hopes it will likewise amuse her to whom I am so much indebted for the most pleasing of all amusements, her delicious company and heavenly harmony.

"It was," said he, "the opinion of learned philosophers of our race, who lived and flourished long before my time, that this vast world, the Moulin Joly, could not itself subsist more than eighteen hours; and I think there was some foundation for that opinion, since, by the apparent motion of the great luminary that gives life to all nature, and which in my time has evidently declined considerably towards the ocean at the end of our earth, it must then finish its course, be extinguished in the waters that surround us, and leave the world in cold and darkness, necessarily producing universal death and destruction. I have lived seven of those hours, a great age, being no less than four hundred and twenty minutes of time. How very few of us continue so long! I have seen generations born, flourish, and expire. My present friends are the children and grandchildren of the friends of my youth, who are now, alas, no more! And I must soon follow them; for, by the course of nature, though still in health, I cannot expect to live above seven or eight minutes longer. What now avails all my toil and labor in amassing honey-dew on this leaf, which I cannot live to enjoy! What the political struggles I have been engaged in for the good of my compatriot inhabitants of this bush, or my philosophical studies for the benefit of our race in general! for in politics what can laws do without morals? Our present race of ephemeræ will in a course of minutes become corrupt, like those of other and older bushes, and consequently as wretched. And in philosophy how small our progress! Alas! art is long, and life is short! My friends would comfort me with the idea of a name they say I shall leave behind me; and they tell me I have lived long enough to nature and to glory. But what will fame be to an ephemera who no longer exists? And what will become of all history in the eighteenth hour, when the world itself, even the whole Moulin Joly, shall come to its end and be buried in universal ruin?"

.....

FRANKLIN. Proceed. I am all attention.

GOUT. Do you remember how often you have promised yourself, the following morning, a walk in the grove of Boulogne, in the garden de la Muette, or in your own garden, and have violated your promise, alleging, at one time, it was too cold, at another too warm, too windy, too moist, or what else you pleased; when in truth it was too nothing, but your insuperable love of ease?

.....