This document introduces a book of 100 one-minute speed reading drills formatted with phrase-highlighted text. The goal is to read 600 words per minute, or 10 words per second, which is the threshold for speed reading. Each of the 100 exercises is exactly 600 words and formatted with alternating black and gray text to help the reader focus on meaningful phrases rather than individual words. Practicing these drills is intended to help readers develop the skills and mindset to increase their reading speed.

2. 100
ONE-MINUTE
SPEED READING
DRILLS
(With Special Phrase-Formatted Text)
Read One Exercise in 60 Seconds…
and You’re Speed Reading!!
Copyright © 2016 David Butler

3. Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION
1: PRIDE AND PREJUDICE by Jane Austen
2: ANNE OF GREEN GABLES by Lucy Maud Montgomery
3: DRACULA by Bram Stoker
4: A TALE OF TWO CITIES by Charles Dickens
5: EMMA by Jane Austen
6: DR. JECKYLL AND MR. HYDE by Robert Louis Stevenson
7: RICHARD WAGNER by John F. Runciman
8: THE LIFE OF MARIE ANTOINETTE by Charles Duke Yong
9: GROW RICH WHILE YOU SLEEP by Ben Sweetland
10: HOW TO USE YOUR MIND by Harry D. Kitson, PH.D.
11: THE EVE OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION by Edward J. Lowell
12: THINK AND GROW RICH by Napoleon Hill
13: SUCCESS THRU PUBLIC SPEAKING by Joseph T. Karcher
14: THE ART OF THOUGHT READING by Joseph Dunninger
15: ECONOMICS IN ONE LESSON by Henry Hazlitt
16: A JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH by Jules Verne
17: HISTORY OF WORLD WAR I by Albert E. Mckinley, Ph.D.
18: AROUND THE WORLD IN EIGHTY DAYS by Jules Verne
19: HUCKLEBERRY FINN by Mark Twain
20: THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
21: A YOUNG GIRL’S DIARY Translated by Eden and Cedar Paul
22: FOUR GREAT AMERICANS by James Baldwin, Ph.D.
23: THE ADVENTURES OF PINOCCHIO by C. Collodi
24: DUBLINERS by James Joyce

4. 25: WHAT IS COMING AFTER WWI? by H.G. Wells
26: OLD GREEK STORIES by James Baldwin
27: THE EMPIRE OF RUSSIA by John S. C. Abbott
28: BLACK BEAUTY by Anna Sewell
29: A CHRISTMAS CAROL by Charles Dickens
30: STORIES TO TELL TO CHILDREN by Sara Cone Bryant
31: THE ALAMO AND GOLIAD by Joseph A. Altsheler
32: CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS by Elbridge S Brooks
33: THE ONTARIO READERS by unknown authors
34: LIFE OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN by William M. Thayer
35: A LITTLE PRINCESS by Frances Hodgson Burnett
36: THE PRINCE AND THE PAUPER by Mark Twain
37: BEAUTY AND THE BEAST by Marie Le Prince de Beaumont
38: PUBLIC SPEAKING PRINCIPLES by Irvah Lester Winter
39: CINDERELLA by Charles Perrault
40: THE LEGEND OF SLEEPY HOLLOW by Washington Irving
41: THE BOBBSEY TWINS AT SCHOOL by Laura Lee Hope
42: THE BOBBSEY TWINS AT SNOW LODGE by Laura Lee Hope
43: THE BOBBSEY TWINS IN THE COUNTRY by Laura Lee Hope
44: THE BOBBSEY TWINS IN WASHINGTON by Laura Lee Hope
45: THE BOBBSEY TWINS ON A HOUSEBOAT by Laura Lee Hope
46: THE LAND THAT TIME FORGOT by Edgar Rice Burroughs
47: AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF BUFFALO BILL by Colonel W. F. Cody
48: A CONSICE HISTORY OF THE U.S. by Barnes & Co.
49: THE PEOPLE THAT TIME FORGOT by Edgar Rice Burroughs
50: THE THIEF by Fyodor Dostoevsky
51: HOW TO DO IT by Edward Everett Hale
52: CLEOPATRA by Jacob Abbott

5. 53: THE MYSTERIOUS STRANGER by Mark Twain
54: KING ARTHUR AND HIS KNIGHTS by Sir James Knowles
55: THE METAMORPHOSIS by Franz Kafka
56: SONS AND LOVERS by D. H. Lawrence
57: THE GUNS OF BULL RUN by Joseph A. Altsheler
58: DAISY MILLER by Henry James
59: SCANDAL IN BOHEMIA by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
60: THE STORY OF ELECTRICITY by John Munro
61: A ROOM WITH A VIEW by E. M. Forster
62: HERO TALES OF AMERICAN HISTORY by Henry Cabot Lodge
63: THE SWISS FAMILY ROBINSON told by Mary Godolphin
64: READING MADE EASY by John L. Huelshof
65: THE COMMUNIST MANIFESTO by Carl Marx & Friedrich Engels
66: A CONNECTICUT YANKEE by Mark Twain
67: COMMON SENSE by Thomas Paine
68: HOW TO ACT by Robert Graham Paris
69: EINSTEIN’S THEORY OF RELATIVITY by Prof. H.A. Lorentz
70: HISTORY OF JULIUS CAESAR by Jacob Abbott
71: A CASE OF IDENTITY by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
72: AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF CHARLES DARWIN
73: A GHOST STORY by Mark Twain
74: A KINDERGARTEN STORY BOOK by Jane L. Hoxie
75: THE LIFE OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN by Henry Ketcham
76: STORIES OF INVENTORS by Russell Doubleday
77: AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ANDREW CARNEGIE
78: MARK TWAIN by Archibald Henderson
79: IN THE COURT OF KING ARTHUR by Samuel E. Lowe
80: HOW TO TELL A STORY by Mark Twain

6. 81: THE COMPLETE BOOK OF CATS by Adie Suehsdorf
82: ANCIENT MAN by Hendrik Willem Van Loon
83: THE HISTORY OF THE TELEPHONE by Herbert N. Casson
84: ROMEO AND JULIET (Simplified) by Charles and Mary Lamb
85: HENRY VIII AND HIS COURT by unknown author
86: THE SCOUTS OF STONEWALL by Joseph A. Altsheler
87: SPEECH POWER by Adelbert Brown
88: TALKS ON TALKING by Grenville Kleiser
89: AN IDEAL FAMILY by Katherine Mansfield
90: A CHARMED LIFE by Richard Harding Davis
91: CAVE BOY OF THE AGE OF STONE by Margaret A. Mcintyre
92: TWO PENNILESS PRINCESSES by Charlotte M. Yonge
93: THE $30,000 BEQUEST by Mark Twain
94: HOW TO SHOW YOUR OWN DOG by Virginia Tuck Nichols
95: STORY HOUR READERS by Ida Coe, Pd.M.
96: POLITICAL IDEALS by Bertrand Russell
97: THE SPECKLED BAND by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
98: DRACULA’S GUEST by Bram Stoker
99: A SCHOOL STORY by M. R. James
100: EVE’S DIARY by Mark Twain
Additional Resources

7. INTRODUCTION
“Speed reading” is 600 words per minute.
That’s 10 words per second.
Or it can be… just two 5-word phrases per second.
It’s only reading two phrases during the “tick-tock” of a clock.

8. Speed Reading
600 wpm is the threshold of real speed reading. That’s double the average
reading speed of college students and triple the overall adult speed.
Of every 1,000 English speaking adults, only ONE is a speed reader.
Here’s the challenge: Read 600 words in 60 seconds. When you do, you’ll be
speed reading. Simple as that. With excerpts exactly 600 words long, you’ll
have an easy way to practice, measure and achieve this goal.
In only 60 seconds a day you could double or triple your reading speed by
training yourself to see whole phrases and meaningful ideas at each glance.
There are 100 reading excerpts and each excerpt is 600 “standard” words
long. The average English word length is 4½ characters. 600 standard words
plus the 599 spaces, comes to 3299 total characters.
Therefore, every excerpt in this book ends after the first word that reaches
3299 characters (including spaces). This rather abrupt ending to the exercises
is to ensure that each excerpt is precisely 600 standard word-lengths, so that
you’ll have an easy-to-see and obvious goal to strive for.
Granted, accomplishing this goal may not be extremely easy at first. (If it IS
easy for you, then maybe you’ve wasted your money on this book.) But when
you complete an exercise in one minute, you’ll be speed reading, and you’ll
see exactly what real speed reading feels like.
You CAN do this, but of course it does take practice. It also takes a new
mental approach to reading. It takes moving away from the words and sounds,
and focusing more attention on ideas and thoughts, which we’ll get into a

9. little in the next section on phrase-reading.
There are two speed approaches you can take. You can either see how fast
you can read an excerpt, or see how much you can understand when you push
yourself to complete an excerpt in 60 seconds. Using either or both of these
methods will develop the habits and mindsets of faster reading.
Don’t think you can’t be the one in a thousand. Many people will not even try,
but you can learn to speed read, and these practice excerpts give you a
straight-forward way to measure and achieve this goal.
The purpose here is to give you a clear and simple target to aim for; a speed
reading bullseye. Just select an excerpt, start your timer, and go!
You can read the excerpts, in any order. You can also repeat any excerpts. It
doesn’t matter if you’ve previously read them and are familiar with the
material, because all speed practice adds to your reading habits. You want to
practice what 600 wpm feels like. You want to create the habit in your mind
of reading and understanding text at an accelerated speed.
As you speed read these short excerpts, your mind will automatically adjust
and alter the way it perceives text. It will start to discover new ways to focus
better and store and assimilate information faster.
It’s not that your mind couldn’t do this before, it was just never asked to.

10. Phrase-Reading
Phrases are where the meaning is. Words are way too vague on their own.
And sentences are usually too long to read in a single glance.
But phrases, meaningful word-groups, are compact and understandable pieces
of information that can be understood as a single idea, all at once, just as if
they were one single compound word.
If this is new to you, you’re probably wondering how you can focus on
meaningful phrases — how can you know what groups of words to read
together to make up these meaningful phrases.
Well, if you haven’t read Speed Reading with the Right Brain, or Easy Speed
Reading, let me give you the short version of this technique.
Basically, you use visualizing to encourage your mind to focus on the ideas
instead of words. When you attempt to visualize the ideas you’re reading,
your subconscious mind automatically gravitates to meaningful phrases
because that’s where the ideas are.
So to see the text in meaningful phrases, try to use your imagination as much
as possible while you read, and you’ll find that your eyes will focus on the
phrases for you.
To guide you while learning to read phrases, all of the text in the practice
excerpts is phrase-highlighted. This is done by alternating each phrase
between black and gray text to assist you in focusing on the whole phrases.
There’s no difference between black phrases or gray phrases — the black and
gray text is just a method to the phrases stand out as separate entities.
Note that these word-groups are not merely randomly fixed word lengths. For
example, they’re not just a set number of every four, five or six words.
Instead, the words are grouped together into actual meaningful phrases; that is
phrases that you can quickly read and imagine as complete ideas.
This is an example of phrase-highlighted text. Each meaningful phrase is easy
to see as a separate block of text so you can quickly focus on whole ideas at a
time rather than simply reading a string of words. Practice reading this text as
fast as you can while visualizing and imagining what you read and watch as
your reading turns into a virtual movie in your head.

11. 1: PRIDE AND PREJUDICE
by Jane Austen
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a
good fortune, must be in want of a wife.
However little known the feelings or views of such a man may be on his first
entering a neighborhood, this truth is so well fixed in the minds of the
surrounding families, that he is considered the rightful property of someone or
other of their daughters.
“My dear Mr. Bennet,” said his lady to him one day, “have you heard that
Netherfield Park is let at last?”
Mr. Bennet replied that he had not.
“But it is,” returned she; “for Mrs. Long has just been here, and she told me
all about it.”
Mr. Bennet made no answer.
“Do you not want to know who has taken it?” cried his wife impatiently.
“You want to tell me, and I have no objection to hearing it.”
This was invitation enough.
“Why, my dear, you must know, Mrs. Long says that Netherfield is taken by a
young man of large fortune from the north of England; that he came down on
Monday in a chaise and four to see the place, and was so much delighted with
it, that he agreed with Mr. Morris immediately; that he is to take possession
before Michaelmas, and some of his servants are to be in the house by the end
of next week.”
“What is his name?”
“Bingley.”
“Is he married or single?”
“Oh! Single, my dear, to be sure! A single man of large fortune; four or five
thousand a year. What a fine thing for our girls!”
“How so? How can it affect them?”
“My dear Mr. Bennet,” replied his wife, “how can you be so tiresome! You
must know that I am thinking of his marrying one of them.”

12. “Is that his design in settling here?”
“Design! Nonsense, how can you talk so! But it is very likely that he may fall
in love with one of them, and therefore you must visit him as soon as he
comes.”
“I see no occasion for that. You and the girls may go, or you may send them
by themselves, which perhaps will be still better, for as you are as handsome
as any of them, Mr. Bingley may like you the best of the party.”
“My dear, you flatter me. I certainly have had my share of beauty, but I do not
pretend to be anything extraordinary now. When a woman has five grown-up
daughters, she ought to give over thinking of her own beauty.”
“In such cases, a woman has not often much beauty to think of.”
“But, my dear, you must indeed go and see Mr. Bingley when he comes into
the neighborhood.”
“It is more than I engage for, I assure you.”
“But consider your daughters. Only think what an establishment it would be
for one of them. Sir-William and Lady Lucas are determined to go, merely on
that account, for in general, you know, they visit no newcomers. Indeed you
must go, for it will be impossible for us to visit him if you do not.”
“You are over-scrupulous, surely. I dare say Mr. Bingley will be very glad to
see you; and I will send a few lines by you to assure him of my hearty consent
to his marrying whichever he chooses of the girls; though I must throw in a
good word for my little Lizzy.”
“I desire you will do no such thing. Lizzy is not a bit better than the others;
and I am sure she is not half so handsome as Jane, nor half so good-humored
as Lydia. But you are always giving her the preference.”
“They have none of them much to recommend them,” replied he; “they are all
silly and ignorant like other girls; but Lizzy has something more of quickness
than her…

13. 2: ANNE OF GREEN GABLES
by Lucy Maud Montgomery
Mrs. Rachel Lynde is Surprised
Mrs. Rachel Lynde lived just where the Avonlea main road dipped down into
a little hollow, fringed with alders and ladies’ eardrops and traversed by a
brook that had its source away back in the woods of the old Cuthbert place; it
was reputed to be an intricate, headlong brook in its earlier course through
those woods, with dark secrets of pool and cascade; but by the time it reached
Lynde’s Hollow it was a quiet, well-conducted little stream, for not even a
brook could run past Mrs. Rachel Lynde’s door without due regard for
decency and decorum; it probably was conscious that Mrs. Rachel was sitting
at her window, keeping a sharp eye on everything that passed, from brooks
and children up, and that if she noticed anything odd or out of place she
would never rest until she had ferreted out the whys and wherefores thereof.
There are plenty of people in Avonlea and out of it, who can attend closely to
their neighbor’s business by dint of neglecting their own; but Mrs. Rachel
Lynde was one of those capable creatures who can manage their own
concerns and those of other folks into the bargain. She was a notable
housewife; her work was always done and well done; she “ran” the Sewing
Circle, helped run the Sunday-school, and was the strongest prop of the
Church Aid Society and Foreign Missions Auxiliary. Yet with all this Mrs.
Rachel found abundant time to sit for hours at her kitchen window, knitting
“cotton warp” quilts−she had knitted sixteen of them, as Avonlea
housekeepers were wont to tell in awed voices−and keeping a sharp eye on
the main road that crossed the hollow and wound up the steep red hill beyond.
Since Avonlea occupied a little triangular peninsula jutting out into the Gulf
of St. Lawrence with water on two sides of it, anybody who went out of it or
into it had to pass over that hill road and so run the unseen gauntlet of Mrs.
Rachel’s all-seeing eye.
She was sitting there one afternoon in early June. The sun was coming in at
the window warm and bright; the orchard on the slope below the house was in
a bridal flush of pinky- white bloom, hummed over by a myriad of bees.
Thomas Lynde−a meek little man whom Avonlea people called “Rachel
Lynde’s husband”−was sowing his late turnip seed on the hill field beyond the
barn; and Matthew Cuthbert ought to have been sowing his on the big red
brook field away over by Green Gables. Mrs. Rachel knew that he ought

14. because she had heard him tell Peter Morrison the evening before in William
J. Blair’s store over at Carmody that he meant to sow his turnip seed the next
afternoon. Peter had asked him, of course, for Matthew Cuthbert had never
been known to volunteer information about anything in his whole life.
And yet here was Matthew Cuthbert, at half-past three on the afternoon of a
busy day, placidly driving over the hollow and up the hill; moreover, he wore
a white collar and his best suit of clothes, which was plain proof that he was
going out of Avonlea; and he had the buggy and the sorrel mare, which
betokened that he was going a considerable distance. Now, where was
Matthew Cuthbert going and why was he going there?
Had it been any other man in Avonlea, Mrs. Rachel, deftly putting this and
that together, might have given a pretty good guess as to both questions.
But…

15. 3: DRACULA
by Bram Stoker
Jonathan Harker’s Journal
3 May. Bistritz.−Left Munich at 8:35 P.M., on 1st May, arriving at Vienna
early next morning; should have arrived at 6:46, but train was an hour late.
Buda-Pesth seems a wonderful place, from the glimpse which I got of it from
the train and the little I could walk through the streets. I feared to go very far
from the station, as we had arrived late and would start as near the correct
time as possible.
The impression I had was that we were leaving the West and entering the
East; the most western of splendid bridges over the Danube, which is here of
noble width and depth, took us among the traditions of Turkish rule.
We left in pretty good time, and came after nightfall to Klausenburgh. Here I
stopped for the night at the Hotel Royale. I had for dinner, or rather supper, a
chicken done up some way with red pepper, which was very good but thirsty.
(Mem. get recipe for Mina.) I asked the waiter, and he said it was called
“paprika hendl,” and that, as it was a national dish, I should be able to get it
anywhere along the Carpathians.
I found my smattering of German very useful here, indeed, I don’t know how
I should be able to get on without it.
Having had some time at my disposal when in London, I had visited the
British Museum, and made search among the books and maps in the library
regarding Transylvania; it had struck me that some foreknowledge of the
country could hardly fail to have some importance in dealing with a nobleman
of that country.
I find that the district he named is in the extreme east of the country, just on
the borders of three states, Transylvania, Moldavia, and Bukovina, in the
midst of the Carpathian Mountains; one of the wildest and least known
portions of Europe.
I was not able to light on any map or work giving the exact locality of the
Castle Dracula, as there are no maps of this country as yet to compare with
our own Ordance Survey Maps; but I found that Bistritz, the post town named
by Count Dracula, is a fairly well-known place. I shall enter here some of my
notes, as they may refresh my memory when I talk over my travels with
Mina.

16. In the population of Transylvania there are four distinct nationalities: Saxons
in the South, and mixed with them the Wallachs, who are the descendants of
the Dacians; Magyars in the West, and Szekelys in the East and North. I am
going among the latter, who claim to be descended from Attila and the Huns.
This may be so, for when the Magyars conquered the country in the eleventh
century they found the Huns settled in it.
I read that every known superstition in the world is gathered into the
horseshoe of the Carpathians, as if it were the centre of some sort of
imaginative whirlpool; if so my stay may be very interesting. (Mem., I must
ask the Count all about them.)
I did not sleep well, though my bed was comfortable enough, for I had all
sorts of queer dreams. There was a dog howling all night under my window,
which may have had something to do with it; or it may have been the paprika,
for I had to drink up all the water in my carafe, and was still thirsty. Towards
morning I slept and was wakened by the continuous knocking at my door, so I
guess I must have been sleeping soundly then.
I had for breakfast more paprika, and a sort of porridge of maize flour which
they said was…

17. 4: A TALE OF TWO CITIES
by Charles Dickens
The Period
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it
was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of
incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was
the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us,
we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all
going direct the other way−in short, the period was so far like the present
period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for
good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.
There were a king with a large jaw and a queen with a plain face, on the
throne of England; there were a king with a large jaw and a queen with a fair
face, on the throne of France. In both countries it was clearer than crystal to
the lords of the State preserves of loaves and fishes, that things in general
were settled for ever.
It was the year of Our Lord one thousand seven hundred and seventy-five.
Spiritual revelations were conceded to England at that favored period, as at
this. Mrs. Southcott had recently attained her five-and-twentieth blessed
birthday, of whom a prophetic private in the Life Guards had heralded the
sublime appearance by announcing that arrangements were made for the
swallowing up of London-and Westminster. Even the Cock-lane ghost had
been laid only a round dozen of years, after rapping out its messages, as the
spirits of this very year last past (supernaturally deficient in originality)
rapped out theirs. Mere messages in the earthly order of events had lately
come to the English Crown and-People, from a congress of British subjects in
America: which, strange to relate, have proved more important to the human
race than any communications yet received through any of the chickens of the
Cock-lane brood.
France, less favored on the whole as to matters spiritual than her sister of the
shield and trident, rolled with exceeding smoothness down hill, making paper
money and spending it. Under the guidance of her Christian pastors, she
entertained herself, besides, with such humane achievements as sentencing a
youth to have his hands cut off, his tongue torn out with pincers, and his body
burned alive, because he had not kneeled down in the rain to do honor to a
dirty procession of monks which passed within his view, at a distance of some

18. fifty or sixty yards. It is likely enough that, rooted in the woods of France and
Norway, there were growing trees, when that sufferer was put to death,
already marked by the Woodman, Fate, to come down and be sawn into
boards, to make a certain movable framework with a sack and a knife in it,
terrible in history. It is likely enough that in the rough outhouses of some
tillers of the heavy lands adjacent to Paris, there were sheltered from the
weather that very day, rude carts, bespattered with rustic mire, snuffed about
by pigs, and roosted in by poultry, which the Farmer, Death, had already set
apart to be his tumbrils of the Revolution. But that Woodman and that Farmer,
though they work unceasingly, work silently, and no one heard them as they
went about with muffled tread: the rather, forasmuch as to entertain any
suspicion that they were awake, was to be atheistical and traitorous…

19. 5: EMMA
by Jane Austen
Emma Woodhouse, handsome, clever, and rich, with a comfortable home and
happy disposition, seemed to unite some of the best blessings of existence;
and had lived nearly twenty-one years in the world with very little to distress
or vex her.
She was the youngest of the two daughters of a most affectionate, indulgent
father; and had, in consequence of her sister’s marriage, been mistress of his
house from a very early period. Her mother had died too long ago for her to
have more than an indistinct remembrance of her caresses; and her place had
been supplied by an excellent woman as governess, who had fallen little short
of a mother in affection.
Sixteen years had Miss Taylor been in Mr. Woodhouse’s family, less as a
governess than a friend, very fond of both daughters, but particularly of
Emma. Between them it was more the intimacy of sisters. Even before Miss
Taylor had ceased to hold the nominal office of governess, the mildness of her
temper had hardly allowed her to impose any restraint; and the shadow of
authority being now long passed away, they had been living together as friend
and friend very mutually attached, and Emma doing just what she liked;
highly esteeming Miss Taylor’s judgment, but directed chiefly by her own.
The real evils, indeed, of Emma’s situation were the power of having rather
too much her own way, and a disposition to think a little too well of herself;
these were the disadvantages which threatened alloy to her many enjoyments.
The danger, however, was at present so unperceived, that they did not by any
means rank as misfortunes with her.
Sorrow came−a gentle sorrow−but not at all in the shape of any disagreeable
consciousness−Miss Taylor married. It was Miss Taylor’s loss which first
brought grief. It was on the wedding-day of this beloved friend that Emma
first sat in mournful thought of any continuance. The wedding over, and the
bride-people gone, her father and herself were left to dine together, with no
prospect of a third to cheer a long evening. Her father composed himself to
sleep after dinner, as usual, and she had then only to sit and think of what she
had lost.
The event had every promise of happiness for her friend. Mr. Weston was a
man of unexceptionable character, easy fortune, suitable age, and pleasant

20. manners; and there was some satisfaction in considering with what self-
denying, generous friendship she had always wished and promoted the match;
but it was a black morning’s work for her. The want of Miss Taylor would be
felt every hour of every day. She recalled her past kindness−the kindness, the
affection of sixteen years−how she had taught and how she had played with
her from five years old−how she had devoted all her powers to attach and
amuse her in health−and how nursed her through the various illnesses of
childhood. A large debt of gratitude was owing here; but the intercourse of the
last seven years, the equal footing and perfect unreserve which had soon
followed Isabella’s marriage, on their being left to each other, was yet a
dearer, tenderer recollection. She had been a friend and companion such as
few possessed: intelligent, well-informed, useful, gentle, knowing all the
ways of the family, interested in all its concerns, and peculiarly interested in
herself, in every pleasure, every scheme of…

21. 6: DR. JECKYLL AND MR. HYDE
by Robert Louis Stevenson
Mr. Utterson the lawyer was a man of a rugged countenance, that was never
lighted by a smile; cold, scanty and embarrassed in discourse; backward in
sentiment; lean, long, dusty, dreary, and yet somehow lovable. At friendly
meetings, and when the wine was to his taste, something eminently human
beaconed from his eye; something indeed which never found its way into his
talk, but which spoke not only in these silent symbols of the after-dinner face,
but more often and loudly in the acts of his life. He was austere with himself;
drank gin when he was alone, to mortify a taste for vintages; and though he
enjoyed the theatre, had not crossed the doors of one for twenty years. But he
had an approved tolerance for others; sometimes wondering, almost with
envy, at the high pressure of spirits involved in their misdeeds; and in any
extremity inclined to help rather than to reprove.
“I incline to Cain’s heresy,” he used to say quaintly: “I let my brother go to
the devil in his own way.” In this character, it was frequently his fortune to be
the last reputable acquaintance and the last good influence in the lives of
down-going men. And to such as these, so long as they came about his
chambers, he never marked a shade of change in his demeanor.
No doubt the feat was easy to Mr. Utterson; for he was undemonstrative at the
best, and even his friendship seemed to be founded in a similar catholicity of
good-nature. It is the mark of a modest man to accept his friendly circle
ready-made from the hands of opportunity; and that was the lawyer’s way.
His friends were those of his own blood or those whom he had known the
longest; his affections, like ivy, were the growth of time, they implied no
aptness in the object. Hence, no doubt, the bond that united him to Mr.
Richard Enfield, his distant kinsman, the well-known man about town. It was
a nut to crack for many, what these two could see in each other, or what
subject they could find in common. It was reported by those who encountered
them in their Sunday walks, that they said nothing, looked singularly dull, and
would hail with obvious relief the appearance of a friend. For all that, the two
men put the greatest store by these excursions, counted them the chief jewel
of each week, and not only set aside occasions of pleasure, but even resisted
the calls of business, that they might enjoy them uninterrupted.
It chanced on one of these rambles that their way led them down a by-street in
a busy quarter of London. The street was small and what is called quiet, but it

22. drove a thriving trade on the week-days. The inhabitants were all doing well,
it seemed, and all emulously hoping to do better still, and laying out the
surplus of their gains in coquetry; so that the shop fronts stood along that
thoroughfare with an air of invitation, like rows of smiling saleswomen. Even
on Sunday, when it veiled its more florid charms and lay comparatively empty
of passage, the street shone out in contrast to its dingy neighborhood, like a
fire in a forest; and with its freshly painted shutters, well-polished brasses,
and general cleanliness and gaiety of note, instantly caught and pleased the
eye of the passenger.
Two doors from one corner, on the left hand going east, the line was broken
by the entry of a court; and just at that point…

23. 7: RICHARD WAGNER
by John F. Runciman
As the springtide of 1813 was melting into early summer the poet and
musician of spring days and summer nights was born at the house of the Red
and White Lion on the Bruehl in old Leipzig. The precise date was May 22;
and owing to many causes the 16th of August came round before, at the
church of St. Thomas, the child was christened Wilhelm Richard Wagner. The
events and circumstances of the period have furnished the imaginative with
many striking portents with regard to the future mighty composer; and, to do
the prophets full justice, after the event−long after the event−they have widely
opened their mouths and uttered prophecies. Thus the name of the house,
describing a beast such as never was on sea or land, distinctly warned a
drowsy people that the monstrous dragon of Siegfried was about to take the
road leading from Nowhere to Bayreuth. The spring foretold the songs in
Tannhaeuser and the Valkyrie; the summer, the nights in King Mark’s Cornish
castle-garden and amongst the fragrant lime-trees in the streets of ancient
Nuremberg; the horrors of the war raging at the very gates of Leipzig and
Napoleon’s flight, the advent of the preacher who was to earn a long exile by
advising the Saxon soldiers not to shoot their brethren. Events provided
material for these and many another score of prognostications: only,
fortunately, no one read events rightly at the time, and something fresh was
left for the biographers to expend their ingenuity upon.
Richard Wagner came of a German lower middle-class stock. There is not
amongst his ancestry a single man distinguished in letters or any art. His
uncle Adolph, of whom some Bayreuth gentlemen make much, would not be
remembered had he not been Wagner’s uncle. Only by patient research has it
been discovered that one or more of his forebears could so much as play the
organ. His father was an amateur theatrical enthusiast, and he too would have
been utterly forgotten had he not been Wagner’s father. His stepfather−though
this seems hardly to the point−was an actor and portrait-painter; and his one
claim to remembrance is that he was Wagner’s stepfather. So, however
scientifically minded we may be, however strongly disposed to account for
the sudden appearance of a stupendous genius by the cheap and easy method
of pointing to some distinguished ancestor and talking pompously of the laws
of heredity, in Wagner’s case we are baffled and beaten. He came like a
thunderbolt out of a blue sky. We must be content with the fact that he came.
His father and grandfather were state or municipal officials both; and bearing

24. in mind Wagner’s frank detestation of officialdom, the scientist can scarcely
draw much comfort from that.
The grandfather, Gottlob Friedrich Wagner, was born in 1736, only a few
years later than Haydn. In 1769 he married the daughter of a charity-school
master or caretaker; and in 1770, the year of Beethoven’s birth, his first child,
christened Carl Friedrich Wilhelm, was born. Four years later Adolph arrived.
Gottlob was a douanier, an exciseman, at the Rannstadt gate of Leipzig, and
passed his days, I dare say, as honestly as an exciseman can, in examining
incoming travelers to see that they did not bring with them so much as an egg
that had not paid duty. He died in 1795. Meantime, Carl Friedrich…

25. 8: THE LIFE OF MARIE ANTOINETTE
by Charles Duke Yong
The most striking event in the annals of modern Europe is unquestionably the
French Revolution of 1789−a Revolution which, in one sense, may be said to
be still in progress, but which, in a more limited view, may be regarded as
having been, consummated by the deposition and murder of the sovereign of
the country. It is equally undeniable that, during its first period, the person
who most attracts and rivets attention is the queen. One of the most brilliant
of modern French writers has recently remarked that, in spite of the number
of years which have elapsed since the grave closed over the sorrows of Marie
Antoinette, and of the almost unbroken series of exciting events which have
marked the annals of France in the interval, the interest excited by her story is
as fresh and engrossing as ever; that such as Hecuba and Andromache were to
the ancients, objects never named to inattentive ears, never contemplated
without lively sympathy, such still is their hapless queen to all honest and
intelligent Frenchmen. It may even be said that that interest has increased of
late years. The respectful and remorseful pity which her fate could not fail to
awaken has been quickened by the publication of her correspondence with her
family and intimate friends, which has laid bare, without disguise, all her
inmost thoughts and feelings, her errors as well as her good deeds, her
weaknesses equally with her virtues. Few, indeed, even of those whom the
world regards with its highest favor and esteem, could endure such an ordeal
without some diminution of their fame. Yet it is but recording the general
verdict of all whose judgment is of value, to affirm that Marie Antoinette has
triumphantly surmounted it; and that the result of a scrutiny as minute and
severe as any to which a human being has ever been subjected, has been
greatly to raise her reputation.
Not that she was one of those paragons whom painters of model heroines
have delighted to imagine to themselves; one who from childhood gave
manifest indications of excellence and greatness, and whose whole life was
but a steady progressive development of its early promise. She was rather one
in whom adversity brought forth great qualities, her possession of which, had
her life been one of that unbroken sunshine which is regarded by many as the
natural and inseparable attendant of royalty, might never have been even
suspected. We meet with her first, at an age scarcely advanced beyond
childhood, transported from her school-room to a foreign court, as wife to the
heir of one of the noblest kingdoms of Europe. And in that situation we see

26. her for a while a light-hearted, merry girl, annoyed rather than elated by her
new magnificence; thoughtless, if not frivolous, in her pursuits; fond of dress;
eager in her appetite for amusement, tempered only by an innate purity of
feeling which never deserted her; the brightest features of her character being
apparently a frank affability, and a genuine and active kindness and humanity
which were displayed to all classes and on all occasions. We see her presently
as queen, hardly yet arrived at womanhood, little changed in disposition or in
outward demeanor, though profiting to the utmost by the opportunities which
her increased power afforded her of proving the genuine tenderness…

27. 9: GROW RICH WHILE YOU SLEEP
by Ben Sweetland
95% of all human problems stem from a negative mind. This figure includes
such traits as timidity, domestic discord, business failure, bad memory,
tenseness, unhappiness, worry, etc.
You can do something about it… while you sleep!
You are a mind with a body attached, not a body with a mind attached!
Realize this and you are on your way to self-mastery. This is the new
approach to the Conscious Mind through the other level that never sleeps, the
Creative Mind. What you will discover is priceless!
This book shows how to use the deepest thinking part of you, while you sleep,
to get whatever you want out of life… money, personal influence, love,
respect and admiration.
At will, you can direct your Creative Mind to assist you in solving
problems… making the right decisions… in creating ways and means of great
achievement… overnight! With this technique you can sleep on it and awake
in the morning with answers so clear-cut you will be amazed!
You will discover:
—6 exercises that develop your latent creative powers into a mental
powerhouse.
—5 ways to make your Creative Mind work for you.
—a formula for building a success consciousness that will lead you to success
in any direction… and double your income.
—how to develop your powers of concentration.
—how to accentuate the positive… and gain a magnetic personality.
—how to go on a mental diet… to gain radiant mental and physical health…
and feel younger than your years, even at 70.
By unblocking the mind-line this method automatically improves the
memory, strengthens other mental powers, casting out self-doubt and self-
defeat. It builds optimism, confidence, courage, and brings out latent talents,
shows that you can grow rich… in all things… material as well as spiritual…
while you sleep.

28. How This Book Helps You Grow Rich
Prepare yourself for a wonderful experience. Whatever you want out of life,
this book will show you the way to make it come to you. Be it money,
influence, love, respect, or admiration—be it any or all of these—it will be
yours in abounding measure.
This way to get rich is universal. It has brought riches to men who work at all
kinds of occupations in many parts of the world. It does not depend on your
education, your background or your luck.
It depends on the most essential, deepest-thinking part of you.
Just look around and you’ll see how few men really know what they want or
where they’re going. Having no goal in mind, they can’t even discern the
difference between what is good for them and what is bad.
If you too are that way—don’t worry. This book is going to change you. Start
by remembering that you are better than you consciously think you are. In
fact, if you already know how you would like to spend a lot of money, you are
far ahead of most men!
Before you finish this book, you are going to know once and for all:
How to recognize your real goals in life—no matter what anyone else tries to
tell you:
How to get acquainted with your real self—your true abilities, your vast fund
of hidden talent.
How to fill yourself with such genuine, deep-down confidence, zest and good-
will that other people will be pleased to help you get what you want.
How to find and hold the full, glorious picture of your own success and build
toward that picture with every word and deed.
As your work multiplies in worth, remember…

29. 10: HOW TO USE YOUR MIND
by Harry D. Kitson, PH.D.
In entering upon a college course you are taking a step that may completely
revolutionize your life. You are facing new situations vastly different from
any you have previously met. They are also of great variety, such as finding a
place to eat and sleep, regulating your own finances, inaugurating a new
social life, forming new friendships, and developing in body and mind. The
problems connected with mental development will engage your chief
attention. You are now going to use your mind more actively than ever before
and should survey some of the intellectual difficulties before plunging into the
fight.
Perhaps the first difficulty you will encounter is the substitution of the lecture
for the class recitation to which you were accustomed in high school. This
substitution requires that you develop a new technique of learning, for the
mental processes involved in an oral recitation are different from those used
in listening to a lecture. The lecture system implies that the lecturer has a fund
of knowledge about a certain field and has organized this knowledge in a
form that is not duplicated in the literature of the subject. The manner of
presentation, then, is unique and is the only means of securing the knowledge
in just that form. As soon as the words have left the mouth of the lecturer they
cease to be accessible to you. Such conditions require a unique mental attitude
and unique mental habits. You will be obliged, in the first place, to maintain
sustained attention over long periods of time. The situation is not like that in
reading, in which a temporary lapse of attention may be remedied by turning
back and rereading. In listening to a lecture, you are obliged to catch the
words “on the fly.” Accordingly, you must develop new habits of paying
attention. You will also need to develop a new technique for memorizing,
especially for memorizing things heard. As a partial aid in this, and also for
purposes of organizing material received in lectures, you will need to develop
ability to take notes. This is a process with which you have heretofore had
little to do. It is a most important phase of college life, however, and will
repay earnest study.
Another characteristic of college study is the vast amount of reading required.
Instead of using a single text-book for each course, you may use several. They
may cover great historical periods and represent the ideas of many men. In
view of the amount of reading assigned, you will also be obliged to learn to
read faster. No longer will you have time to dawdle sleepily through the pages

30. of easy texts; you will have to cover perhaps fifty or a hundred pages of
knotty reading every day. Accordingly, you must learn to handle books
expeditiously and to comprehend quickly. In fact, economy must be your
watchword throughout. A German lesson in high school may cover thirty or
forty lines a day, requiring an hour’s preparation. A German assignment in
college, however, may cover four or five or a dozen pages, requiring hard
work for two or three hours.
You should be warned also that college demands not only a greater quantity
but also a higher quality of work. When you were a high school student the
world expected only a high school student’s accomplishments of you. Now
you are a college student, however, and your…

31. 11: THE EVE OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION
by Edward J. Lowell
When Louis XVI. came to the throne in the year 1774, he inherited a power
nearly absolute in theory over all the temporal affairs of his kingdom. In
certain parts of the country the old assemblies or Provincial Estates still met at
fixed times, but their functions were very closely limited. The Parliaments, or
high courts of justice, which had claimed the right to impose some check on
legislation, had been browbeaten by Louis XIV., and the principal one, that of
Paris, had been dissolved by his successor. The young king appeared,
therefore, to be left face to face with a nation over which he was to exercise
direct and despotic power. It was a recognized maxim that the royal was law.
Moreover, for more than two centuries, the tendency of continental
governments had been toward absolutism. Among the great desires of men in
those ages had been organization and strong government. A despotism was
considered more favorable to these things than an aristocracy. Democracy
existed as yet only in the dreams of philosophers, the history of antiquity, and
the example of a few inconsiderable countries, like the Swiss cantons. It was
soon to be brought into greater prominence by the American Revolution. As
yet, however, the French nation looked hopefully to the king for government,
and for such measures of reform as were deemed necessary. A king of France
who had reigned justly and strongly would have received the moral support of
the most respectable part of his subjects. These longed for a fair distribution
of public burdens and for freedom from unnecessary restraint, rather than for
a share in the government. The admiration for the English constitution, which
was commonly expressed, was as yet rather theoretic than practical, and was
not of a nature to detract from the loyalty undoubtedly felt for the French
crown.
Every monarch, however despotic in theory, is in fact surrounded by many
barriers which it takes a strong man to overleap. And so it was with the king
of France. Although he was the fountain of justice, his judicial powers were
exercised through magistrates many of whom had bought their places, and
could therefore not be dispossessed without measures that were felt to be
unjust and almost revolutionary. The breaking up of the Parliament of Paris,
in the latter years of the preceding reign, had thrown the whole body of judges
and lawyers into a state of discontent bordering on revolt. The new court of
justice which had superseded the old one, the Parlement Maupeou as it was
called, after the name of the chancellor who had advised its formation, was

32. neither liked nor respected. It was one of the first acts of the government of
Louis XVI. to restore the ancient Parliament of Paris, whose rights over
legislation will be considered later, but which exercised at least a certain
moral restraint on the royal authority.
But it was in the administrative part of the government, where the king
seemed most free, that he was in fact most hampered. A vast system of public
offices had been gradually formed, with regulations, traditions, and a
professional spirit. This it was which had displaced the old feudal order,
substituting centralization for vigorous local life.
The king’s councils, which had become the central governing power of the
state, were five in…

33. 12: THINK AND GROW RICH
by Napoleon Hill
Teaching, for the first time, the famous Andrew Carnegie formula for money-
making, based upon the THIRTEEN PROVEN STEPS TO RICHES.
Organized through 25 years of research, in collaboration with more than 500
distinguished men of great wealth, who proved by their own achievements
that this philosophy is practical.
WHAT DO YOU WANT MOST?
Is It Money, Fame, Power, Contentment, Personality, Peace of Mind,
Happiness?
The Thirteen Steps to Riches described in this book offer the shortest
dependable philosophy of individual achievement ever presented for the
benefit of the man or woman who is searching for a definite goal in life.
Before beginning the book, you will profit greatly if you recognize the fact
that the book was not written to entertain. You cannot digest the contents
properly in a week or a month.
After reading the book thoroughly, Dr. Miller Reese Hutchison, nationally
known Consulting Engineer and long-time associate of Thomas A. Edison,
said−
“This is not a novel. It is a textbook on individual achievement that came
directly from the experiences of hundreds of America’s most successful men.
It should be studied, digested, and meditated upon. No more than one chapter
should be read in a single night. The reader should underline the sentences
which impress him most. Later, he should go back to these marked lines and
read them again. A real student will not merely read this book, he will absorb
its contents and make them his own. This book should be adopted by all high
schools and no boy or girl should be permitted to graduate without having
satisfactorily passed an examination on it. This philosophy will not take the
place of the subjects taught in schools, but it will enable one to organize and
apply the knowledge acquired, and convert it into useful service and adequate
compensation without waste of time.”
Dr. John R. Turner, Dean of the College of the City of New York, after having
read the book, said−
“The very best example of the soundness of this philosophy is your own son,

34. Blair, whose dramatic story you have outlined in the chapter on Desire.”
Dr. Turner had reference to the author’s son, who, born without normal
hearing capacity, not only avoided becoming a deaf mute, but actually
converted his handicap into a priceless asset by applying the philosophy here
described. After reading the story you will realize that you are about to come
into possession of a philosophy which can be transmuted into material wealth,
or serve as readily to bring you peace of mind, understanding, spiritual
harmony, and in some instances, as in the case of the author’s son, it can help
you master physical affliction.
The author discovered, through personally analyzing hundreds of successful
men, that all of them followed the habit of exchanging ideas, through what is
commonly called conferences. When they had problems to be solved they sat
down together and talked freely until they discovered, from their joint
contribution of ideas, a plan that would serve their purpose.
You, who read this book, will get most out of it by putting into practice the
Master Mind principle described in the book. This you can do (as others are
doing so successfully) by forming a study club, consisting of any desired
number of people who are friendly and harmonious. The club should have…

35. 13: SUCCESS THRU PUBLIC SPEAKING
by Joseph T. Karcher
HOW IMPORTANT IS PUBLIC SPEAKING?
Many people seem to have the idea that the ability to speak in public is a non-
essential or even a luxury. They go through life telling themselves that “they
don’t need it”. Some will say: “It’s alright for him—but not for me.” Others
will say: “In his occupation or vocation it’s important—but in mine it doesn’t
make any difference.” Still others will be heard to say: “I’ll make out just as
good without public speaking.” Nothing could be further from the truth.
Almost everyone needs to know at least the rudiments of the art. It is difficult
to conceive of any line where this ability will not help you achieve your
ambitions. It is fairly safe to say that given any two persons with relatively
equal talents—and other factors being equal, the one with the ability to make
even an average speech in public will go farther in life, accomplish more and
feel better satisfied with himself than the one who does not have this ability.
MAY SPEW, THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN MEDIOCRITY AND
SUPERIORITY
Conversely, no matter how talented you may be, nor how hard you may work
at your task in life, if you cannot express yourself at least simply and
coherently in public, the chances are ten to one that you will never rise above
mediocrity in “your chosen field”. You are destined to see others less talented
than you who do not work anywhere near as hard as you do, rise to positions
of prominence and income beyond your own. Now, if these statements are
true, and from many years of experience and observation I can assure you that
they are, surely you must concede that here is a neglected talent which it
would pay you to develop. In fact, there are few fields of human endeavor
which will reward you as handsomely in prestige, in power, in satisfaction,
yes, and in income than the ability to speak.
A “MUST” FOR CLERGYMEN, LAWYERS, TEACHERS AND
POLITICIANS
There was a time when it was generally thought that clergymen, lawyers,
teachers and politicians were about the only ones who were expected or
required to speak in public. Hence these were the only professions or callings
in which this particular ability was important. Gradually this provincial idea is
giving way to a more enlightened conception of this particular aptitude.

36. Speaking is still as important as ever for the clergyman. He is selling
something intangible. He carries on constantly the never ending battle to win
the hearts and minds of men to the particular dogmas or convictions of his
creed. It is true that most of the churches today also have intensive programs
always in progress in the fields of education, hospitalization, care for the aged
and orphaned to win converts to their cause. But these alone would never
accomplish the result. The major appeal still lies in the spoken word as it has
since the dawn of history.
As for lawyers, can you conceive of a successful advocate who was not also
an eloquent speaker? But it is not only the trial attorney who must acquire
facility in the spoken word. The appellate lawyer must be able to argue his
appeals lucidly, succinctly, persuasively before the upper tribunals. Even the
so-called corporation lawyers and office practitioners must have a fluency of
expression to be able to properly perform their work in these and other
branches of the law…

37. 14: THE ART OF THOUGHT READING
by Joseph Dunninger
THE CURTAIN RISES
The orchestra plays a stirring overture…
The house lights go down and the footlights up…
A few strains of a waltz…
And, the curtains part and open…
THE SHOW IS ON
The mentalist demonstrates his control over your mind and what he decides to
do.
Mysterious? Rather! Sensational? Very! Amazing? Definitely! But you, too,
can learn to read the minds of others.
You, too, can receive the projected thoughts from the mind of another…
present modern miracles of the mind… astound by reading sealed messages,
see through walls of steel… read playing cards, selected at random from a
new sealed pack… and many other feats that are so unbelievable that you
doubt your own senses.
You, too, can experience the thrill at each performance of acknowledging the
hearty and enthusiastic applause of an audience.
There is nothing mysterious… there is nothing supernatural, in being a
Reader of Thoughts.
Interested? Of course you are… otherwise you wouldn’t have purchased this
book.
So on with the show… let us get the inner circle of the initiated… learn the
secrets of what makes the Thought Reader so different from other people. But
is he? Not at all. He is only a human being who has studied and developed
talents in receiving and transmitting thoughts. Confidentially, it is a trade…
just like that of a painter, physician, accountant or politician. He must possess
the glib tongue of the politician, and the… er… well, he is somewhat of a
politician in more ways than one.
So on with the show… and later let us visit backstage, behind the scenes, and
learn what we can of the many tests and demonstrations we have witnessed

38. from a comfortable seat… demonstrations that in some misguided minds
cause the ugly serpent of skepticism to rear its hooded head.
You Too Can Read a Thought
How to Become a Thought Reader
Can I become a thought reader?
That is the question sure to crop up whenever mind reading, thought reading
or telepathic experiments are discussed.
Of course you can… providing you are willing to study and devote time and
patience in experimenting.
Yes, you too can learn to read thoughts.
You wouldn’t expect a person to seat himself at a piano and immediately,
without years of study and practice, expertly play the classics, would you? Of
course not. The same applies to thought reading. To read the projected
thoughts from the mind of another, one must thoroughly understand the whys
and wherefores of this study. Turn a deaf ear to the self-appointed critics who
are jealous of the success of others.
Almost anyone, born with the qualities necessary to learn, can master the
methods of communicating his or her thoughts to someone else. One must
take into consideration the differences between the mental temperament of
most people, as it depends chiefly upon the individual adaptability of the
persons who are really serious in their desire to study thought reading.
Thought reading is the ability of one person to receive, interpret and analyze
the projected thoughts of another.
One taking up this study must be ready to bind themselves to a hard
taskmaster. Put forth every effort sincerely to master, from the written word
and experience as you go along, the various methods and rules, and
understand fully the natural laws involved in this art. There is no simple
formula to follow, no short…

39. 15: ECONOMICS IN ONE LESSON
by Henry Hazlitt
This book is an analysis of economic fallacies that are at last so prevalent that
they have almost become a new orthodoxy. The one thing that has prevented
this has been their own self-contradictions, which have scattered those who
accept the same premises into a hundred different “schools,” for the simple
reason that it is impossible in matters touching practical life to be consistently
wrong. But the difference between one new school and another is merely that
one group wakes up earlier than another to the absurdities to which its false
premises are driving it, and becomes at that moment inconsistent by either
unwittingly abandoning its false premises or accepting conclusions from them
less disturbing or fantastic than those that logic would demand.
There is not a major government in the world at this moment, however, whose
economic policies are not influenced if they are not almost wholly determined
by acceptance of some of these fallacies. Perhaps the shortest and surest way
to an understanding of economics is through a dissection of such errors, and
particularly of the central error from which they stem. That is the assumption
of this volume and of its somewhat ambitious and belligerent title.
The volume is therefore primarily one of exposition. It makes no claim to
originality with regard to any of the chief ideas that it expounds. Rather its
effort is to show that many of the ideas which now pass for brilliant
innovations and advances are in fact mere revivals of ancient errors, and a
further proof of the dictum that those who are ignorant of the past are
condemned to repeat it.
The present essay itself is, I suppose, unblushingly “classical”, “traditional”,
and “orthodox”: at least these are the epithets with which those whose
sophisms are here subjected to analysis will no doubt attempt to dismiss it.
But the student whose aim is to attain as much truth as possible will not be
frightened by such adjectives. He will not be forever seeking a revolution, a
“fresh start,” in economic thought. His mind will, of course, he as receptive to
new ideas as to old ones; but he will be content to put aside merely restless or
exhibitionistic straining for novelty and originality. As Morris R. Cohen has
remarked: “The notion that we can dismiss the views of all previous thinkers
surely leaves no basis for the hope that our own work will prove of any value
to others.” Because this is a work of exposition I have availed myself freely
and without detailed acknowledgment (except for rare footnotes and

40. quotations) of the ideas of others. This is inevitable when one writes in a field
in which many of the world’s finest minds have labored. But my indebtedness
to at least three writers is of so specific a nature that I cannot allow it to pass
unmentioned. My greatest debt, with respect to the kind of expository
framework on which the present argument is hung, is to Frédéric Bastiat’s
essay Cequ’on voit et ce qu’on ne voit pas, now nearly a century old. The
present work may, in fact, be regarded as a modernization, extension and
generalization of the approach found in Bastiat’s pamphlet. My second debt is
to Philip Wicksteed: in particular the chapters on wages and the final
summary chapter owe much to his Common Sense of Political Economy. My
third debt is…

41. 16: A JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE
EARTH
by Jules Verne
On the 24th of May, 1863, my uncle, Professor Liedenbrock, rushed into his
little house, No. 19 Konigstrasse, one of the oldest streets in the oldest portion
of the city of Hamburg.
Martha must have concluded that she was very much behindhand, for the
dinner had only just been put into the oven.
“Well, now,” said I to myself, “if that most impatient of men is hungry, what a
disturbance he will make!”
“M. Liedenbrock so soon!” cried poor Martha in great alarm, half opening the
dining-room door.
“Yes, Martha; but very likely the dinner is not half cooked, for it is not two
yet. Saint Michael’s clock has only just struck half-past one.”
“Then why has the master come home so soon?”
“Perhaps he will tell us that himself.”
“Here he is, Monsieur Axel; I will run and hide myself while you argue with
him.”
And Martha retreated in safety into her own dominions.
I was left alone. But how was it possible for a man of my undecided turn of
mind to argue successfully with so irascible a person as the Professor? With
this persuasion I was hurrying away to my own little retreat upstairs, when the
street door creaked upon its hinges; heavy feet made the whole flight of stairs
to shake; and the master of the house, passing rapidly through the dining-
room, threw himself in haste into his own sanctum.
But on his rapid way he had found time to fling his hazel stick into a corner,
his rough broadbrim upon the table, and these few emphatic words at his
nephew:
“Axel, follow me!”
I had scarcely had time to move when the Professor was again shouting after
me:
“What! not come yet?”

42. And I rushed into my redoubtable master’s study.
Otto Liedenbrock had no mischief in him, I willingly allow that; but unless he
very considerably changes as he grows older, at the end he will be a most
original character.
He was professor at the Johannaeum, and was delivering a series of lectures
on mineralogy, in the course of every one of which he broke into a passion
once or twice at least. Not at all that he was over-anxious about the
improvement of his class, or about the degree of attention with which they
listened to him, or the success which might eventually crown his labours.
Such little matters of detail never troubled him much. His teaching was as the
German philosophy calls it, ‘subjective’; it was to benefit himself, not others.
He was a learned egotist. He was a well of science, and the pulleys worked
uneasily when you wanted to draw anything out of it. In a word, he was a
learned miser.
Germany has not a few professors of this sort.
To his misfortune, my uncle was not gifted with a sufficiently rapid utterance;
not, to be sure, when he was talking at home, but certainly in his public
delivery; this is a want much to be deplored in a speaker. The fact is, that
during the course of his lectures at the Johannaeum, the Professor often came
to a complete standstill; he fought with wilful words that refused to pass his
struggling lips, such words as resist and distend the cheeks, and at last break
out into the unasked-for shape of a round and most unscientific oath: then his
fury would gradually abate.
Now in mineralogy there are many half-Greek and half-Latin terms, very hard
to articulate, and which would be most trying to a poet’s measures. I don’t
wish to say a word against so respectable a science…

43. 17: HISTORY OF WORLD WAR I
by Albert E. Mckinley, Ph.D.
To understand World War I, it is not sufficient to read the daily happenings of
military and naval events as they are told in newspapers and magazines. We
must go back of the facts of today and find in national history and personal
ambition the causes of the present struggle. Years of preparation were
necessary before German military leaders could convert a nation to their
views, or get ready the men, munitions, and transportation for the war they
wanted. Conflicts of races for hundreds of years have made the southeastern
part of Europe a firebrand in international affairs. The course of the Russian
revolution has been determined largely by the history of the Russian people
and of the Russian rulers during the past two centuries. The entrance of
England and Italy into the war against Germany was in each case brought
about by causes which came into existence long before August, 1914. A
person who understands, even in part, the causes of this great struggle, will be
in a better position to realize why America entered the war and what our
nation is fighting for. And better yet, he will be more ready to take part in
settling the many problems of peace which must come after the war is over.
For these reasons, the first few chapters of this book are devoted to a study of
the important facts of recent European history.
A HUNDRED YEARS AGO− It is remarkable that almost exactly a century
before the present world war, Europe was engaged in a somewhat similar
struggle to prevent an ambitious French general, Napoleon Bonaparte, from
becoming the ruler of all that continent, and of America as well. He had
conquered or intimidated nearly all the states of Europe− Austria, Prussia,
Russia, Spain, etc.− except Great Britain. He once planned a great settlement
on the Mississippi River, and so alarmed President Jefferson that the latter
said the United States might be compelled to “marry themselves to the British
fleet and nation.” But England’s navy kept control of the seas; Napoleon’s
colony in North America was never founded; and at last the peoples of
Europe rose against their conqueror, and in the battle of Waterloo, June 18,
1815, finally overthrew him.
EUROPE SINCE 1815− After the downfall of Napoleon the rulers of Europe
met in conference at Vienna and sought to restore conditions as they had been
before the war. They were particularly anxious that the great masses of the
people in their several nations should continue to respect what was termed
“the divine right of kings to rule over their subjects.” They did not, except in

44. Great Britain, believe in representative governments. They feared free speech
and independent newspapers and liberal educational institutions. They hated
all kinds of popular movements by which the inhabitants of any country
might throw off the monarch’s yoke and secure a share in their own
government. For over thirty years the “Holy Allies,”− the name applied to the
monarchs of Austria, Prussia, and Russia− succeeded tolerably well in
keeping the peoples in subjection. But they had many difficulties to face, and
after 1848 their policy was largely given up.
DEMOCRATIC MOVEMENTS− During the nineteenth century the people of
Europe were restive under the rule of kings, and gradually governments
controlled in greater or lesser degree by…

45. 18: AROUND THE WORLD IN EIGHTY DAYS
by Jules Verne
Mr. Phileas Fogg lived, in 1872, at No. 7, Saville Row, Burlington Gardens,
the house in which Sheridan died in 1814. He was one of the most noticeable
members of the Reform Club, though he seemed always to avoid attracting
attention; an enigmatical personage, about whom little was known, except
that he was a polished man of the world. People said that he resembled Byron
−at least that his head was Byronic; but he was a bearded, tranquil Byron,
who might live on a thousand years without growing old.
Certainly an Englishman, it was more doubtful whether Phileas Fogg was a
Londoner. He was never seen on ‘Change, nor at the Bank, nor in the
counting-rooms of the “City”; no ships ever came into London docks of
which he was the owner; he had no public employment; he had never been
entered at any of the Inns of Court, either at the Temple, or Lincoln’s Inn, or
Gray’s Inn; nor had his voice ever resounded in the Court of Chancery, or in
the Exchequer, or the Queen’s Bench, or the Ecclesiastical Courts. He
certainly was not a manufacturer; nor was he a merchant or a gentleman
farmer. His name was strange to the scientific and learned societies, and he
never was known to take part in the sage deliberations of the Royal Institution
or the London Institution, the Artisan’s Association, or the Institution of Arts
and Sciences. He belonged, in fact, to none of the numerous societies which
swarm in the English capital, from the Harmonic to that of the Entomologists,
founded mainly for the purpose of abolishing pernicious insects.
Phileas Fogg was a member of the Reform, and that was all.
The way in which he got admission to this exclusive club was simple enough.
He was recommended by the Barings, with whom he had an open credit. His
cheques were regularly paid at sight from his account current, which was
always flush.
Was Phileas Fogg rich? Undoubtedly. But those who knew him best could not
imagine how he had made his fortune, and Mr. Fogg was the last person to
whom to apply for the information. He was not lavish, nor, on the contrary,
avaricious; for, whenever he knew that money was needed for a noble, useful,
or benevolent purpose, he supplied it quietly and sometimes anonymously. He
was, in short, the least communicative of men. He talked very little, and
seemed all the more mysterious for his taciturn manner. His daily habits were

46. quite open to observation; but whatever he did was so exactly the same thing
that he had always done before, that the wits of the curious were fairly
puzzled.
Had he travelled? It was likely, for no one seemed to know the world more
familiarly; there was no spot so secluded that he did not appear to have an
intimate acquaintance with it. He often corrected, with a few clear words, the
thousand conjectures advanced by members of the club as to lost and
unheard-of travelers, pointing out the true probabilities, and seeming as if
gifted with a sort of second sight, so often did events justify his predictions.
He must have travelled everywhere, at least in the spirit.
It was at least certain that Phileas Fogg had not absented himself from
London for many years. Those who were honored by a better acquaintance
with him than the rest, declared that nobody could pretend to have ever seen
him anywhere else. His sole pastimes were reading the…

47. 19: HUCKLEBERRY FINN
by Mark Twain
You don’t know about me without you have read a book by the name of The
Adventures of Tom Sawyer; but that ain’t no matter. That book was made by
Mr. Mark Twain, and he told the truth, mainly. There was things which he
stretched, but mainly he told the truth. That is nothing. I never seen anybody
but lied one time or another, without it was Aunt Polly, or the widow, or
maybe Mary. Aunt Polly−Tom’s Aunt Polly, she is−and Mary, and the Widow
Douglas is all told about in that book, which is mostly a true book, with some
stretchers, as I said before.
Now the way that the book winds up is this: Tom and me found the money
that the robbers hid in the cave, and it made us rich. We got six thousand
dollars apiece−all gold. It was an awful sight of money when it was piled up.
Well, Judge Thatcher he took it and put it out at interest, and it fetched us a
dollar a day apiece all the year round−more than a body could tell what to do
with. The Widow Douglas she took me for her son, and allowed she would
sivilize me; but it was rough living in the house all the time, considering how
dismal regular and decent the widow was in all her ways; and so when I
couldn’t stand it no longer I lit out. I got into my old rags and my sugar-
hogshead again, and was free and satisfied. But Tom Sawyer he hunted me up
and said he was going to start a band of robbers, and I might join if I would
go back to the widow and be respectable. So I went back.
The widow she cried over me, and called me a poor lost lamb, and she called
me a lot of other names, too, but she never meant no harm by it. She put me in
them new clothes again, and I couldn’t do nothing but sweat and sweat, and
feel all cramped up. Well, then, the old thing commenced again. The widow
rung a bell for supper, and you had to come to time. When you got to the table
you couldn’t go right to eating, but you had to wait for the widow to tuck
down her head and grumble a little over the victuals, though there warn’t
really anything the matter with them,−that is, nothing only everything was
cooked by itself. In a barrel of odds and ends it is different; things get mixed
up, and the juice kind of swaps around, and the things go better.
After supper she got out her book and learned me about Moses and the
Bulrushers, and I was in a sweat to find out all about him; but by and by she
let it out that Moses had been dead a considerable long time; so then I didn’t
care no more about him, because I don’t take no stock in dead people.

48. Pretty soon I wanted to smoke, and asked the widow to let me. But she
wouldn’t. She said it was a mean practice and wasn’t clean, and I must try to
not do it any more. That is just the way with some people. They get down on
a thing when they don’t know nothing about it. Here she was a-bothering
about Moses, which was no kin to her, and no use to anybody, being gone,
you see, yet finding a power of fault with me for doing a thing that had some
good in it. And she took snuff, too; of course that was all right, because she
done it herself.
Her sister, Miss Watson, a tolerable slim old maid, with goggles on, had just
come to live with her, and took a set at me now with a spelling-book. She
worked me middling hard for about an hour, and then the widow made her
ease up. I couldn’t stood it much longer. Then…

49. 20: THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
TWYFORD, at the Bishop of St. Asaph’s, 1771.
The country-seat of Bishop Shipley, the good bishop, as Dr. Franklin used to
style him.− B.
DEAR SON: I have ever had pleasure in obtaining any little anecdotes of my
ancestors. You may remember the inquiries I made among the remains of my
relations when you were with me in England, and the journey I undertook for
that purpose. Imagining it may be equally agreeable to you to know the
circumstances of my life, many of which you are yet unacquainted with, and
expecting the enjoyment of a week’s uninterrupted leisure in my present
country retirement, I sit down to write them for you. To which I have besides
some other inducements. Having emerged from the poverty and obscurity in
which I was born and bred, to a state of affluence and some degree of
reputation in the world, and having gone so far through life with a
considerable share of felicity, the conducing means I made use of, which with
the blessing of God so well succeeded, my posterity may like to know, as they
may find some of them suitable to their own situations, and therefore fit to be
imitated.
After the words “agreeable to” the words “some of” were interlined and
afterward effaced.− B.
That felicity, when I reflected on it, has induced me sometimes to say, that
were it offered to my choice, I should have no objection to a repetition of the
same life from its beginning, only asking the advantages authors have in a
second edition to correct some faults of the first. So I might, besides
correcting the faults, change some sinister accidents and events of it for others
more favorable. But though this were denied, I should still accept the offer.
Since such a repetition is not to be expected, the next thing most like living
one’s life over again seems to be a recollection of that life, and to make that
recollection as durable as possible by putting it down in writing.
Hereby, too, I shall indulge the inclination so natural in old men, to be talking
of themselves and their own past actions; and I shall indulge it without being
tiresome to others, who, through respect to age, might conceive themselves
obliged to give me a hearing, since this may be read or not as any one pleases.
And, lastly (I may as well confess it, since my denial of it will be believed by

50. nobody), perhaps I shall a good deal gratify my own vanity. Indeed, I scarce
ever heard or saw the introductory words, “Without vanity I may say,” &c.,
but some vain thing immediately followed. Most people dislike vanity in
others, whatever share they have of it themselves; but I give it fair quarter
wherever I meet with it, being persuaded that it is often productive of good to
the possessor, and to others that are within his sphere of action; and therefore,
in many cases, it would not be altogether absurd if a man were to thank God
for his vanity among the other comforts of life.
And now I speak of thanking God, I desire with all humility to acknowledge
that I owe the mentioned happiness of my past life to His kind providence,
which lead me to the means I used and gave them success. My belief of this
induces me to hope, though I must not presume, that the same goodness will
still be exercised toward me, in continuing that happiness, or enabling me to
bear a fatal reverse, which I may experience…

51. 21: A YOUNG GIRL’S DIARY
Translated by Eden and Cedar Paul
July 12. Hella and I are writing a diary. We both agreed that when we went to
the high school we would write a diary every day. Dora keeps a diary too, but
she gets furious if I look at it. I call Helene “Hella,” and she calls me “Rita;”
Helene and Grete are so vulgar. Dora has taken to calling herself “Thea,” but I
go on calling her “Dora.” She says that little children (she means me and
Hella) ought not to keep a diary. She says they will write such a lot of
nonsense. No more than in hers and Lizzi’s.
July 13th. Really we were not to begin writing until after the holidays, but
since we are both going away, we are beginning now. Then we shall know
what we have been doing in the holidays.
The day before yesterday we had an entrance examination, it was very easy,
in dictation I made only 1 mistake−writing ihn without h. The mistress said
that didn’t matter, I had only made a slip. That is quite true, for I know well
enough that ihn has an h in it. We were both dressed in white with rose-
colored ribbons, and everyone believed we were sisters or at least cousins. It
would be very nice to have a cousin. But it’s still nicer to have a friend, for we
can tell one another everything.
July 14th. The mistress was very kind. Because of her Hella and I are really
sorry that we are not going to a middle school. Then every day before lessons
began we could have had a talk with her in the class-room. But we’re awfully
pleased because of the other girls. One is more important when one goes to
the high school instead of only to the middle school. That is why the girls are
in such a rage. “They are bursting with pride” (that’s what my sister says of
me and Hella, but it is not true). “Our two students” said the mistress when
we came away. She told us to write to her from the country. I shall.
July 15th. Lizzi, Hella’s sister, is not so horrid as Dora, she is always so nice!
Today she gave each of us at least ten chocolate-creams. It’s true Hella often
says to me: “You don’t know her, what a beast she can be. Your sister is
generally very nice to me.” Certainly it is very funny the way in which she
always speaks of us as “the little ones” or “the children,” as if she had never
been a child herself, and indeed a much littler one than we are. Besides we’re
just the same as she is now. She is in the fourth class and we are in the first.
Tomorrow we are going to Kaltenbach in Tyrol. I’m frightfully excited. Hella

52. went away today to Hungary to her uncle and aunt with her mother and Lizzi.
Her father is at maneuvers.
July 19th. It’s awfully hard to write every day in the holidays. Everything is
so new and one has no time to write. We are living in a big house in the forest.
Dora bagged the front veranda straight off for her own writing. At the back of
the house there are such swarms of horrid little flies; everything is black with
flies. I do hate flies and such things. I’m not going to put up with being driven
out of the front veranda. I won’t have it. Besides, Father said: “Don’t quarrel,
children!” (Children to her too!!) He’s quite right. She puts on such airs
because she’ll be fourteen in October. “The verandas are common property,”
said Father. Father’s always so just. He never lets Dora lord it over me, but
Mother often makes a favorite of Dora. I’m writing to Hella…

53. 22: FOUR GREAT AMERICANS
by James Baldwin, Ph.D.
THE STORY OF GEORGE WASHINGTON
When George Washington was a boy there was no United States. The land
was here, just as it is now, stretching from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific;
but nearly all of it was wild and unknown.
Between the Atlantic Ocean and the Alleghany Mountains there were thirteen
colonies, or great settlements. The most of the people who lived in these
colonies were English people, or the children of English people; and so the
King of England made their laws and appointed their governors.
The newest of the colonies was Georgia, which was settled the year after
George Washington was born.
The oldest colony was Virginia, which had been settled one hundred and
twenty-five years. It was also the richest colony, and more people were living
in it than in any other.
There were only two or three towns in Virginia at that time, and they were
quite small.
Most of the people lived on farms or on big plantations, where they raised
whatever they needed to eat. They also raised tobacco, which they sent to
England to be sold.
The farms, or plantations, were often far apart, with stretches of thick woods
between them. Nearly everyone was close to a river, or some other large body
of water; for there are many rivers in Virginia.
There were no roads, such as we have nowadays, but only paths through the
woods. When people wanted to travel from place to place, they had to go on
foot, or on horseback, or in small boats.
A few of the rich men who lived on the big plantations had coaches; and now
and then they would drive out in grand style behind four or six horses, with a
fine array of servants and outriders following them. But they could not drive
far where there were no roads, and we can hardly understand how they got
any pleasure out of it.
Nearly all the work on the plantations was done by slaves. Ships had been
bringing negroes from Africa for more than a hundred years, and now nearly

54. half the people in Virginia were blacks.
Very often, also, poor white men from England were sold as slaves for a few
years in order to pay for their passage across the ocean. When their freedom
was given to them they continued to work at whatever they could find to do;
or they cleared small farms in the woods for themselves, or went farther to the
west and became woodsmen and hunters.
There was but very little money in Virginia at that time, and, indeed, there
was not much use for it. For what could be done with money where there
were no shops worth speaking of, and no stores, and nothing to buy?
The common people raised flax and wool, and wove their own cloth; and they
made their own tools and furniture. The rich people did the same; but for their
better or finer goods they sent to England.
For you must know that in all this country there were no great mills for
spinning and weaving as there are now; there were no factories of any kind;
there were no foundries where iron could be melted and shaped into all kinds
of useful and beautiful things.
When George Washington was a boy the world was not much like it is now.
George Washington’s father owned a large plantation on the western shore of
the Potomac River. George’s great-grandfather, John Washington, had settled
upon it nearly eighty years before, and there the family had dwelt ever since.
This plantation was in Westmoreland…

55. 23: THE ADVENTURES OF PINOCCHIO
by C. Collodi
How it happened that Mastro Cherry, carpenter, found a piece of wood that
wept and laughed like a child.
Centuries ago there lived−
“A king!” my little readers will say immediately.
No, children, you are mistaken. Once upon a time there was a piece of wood.
It was not an expensive piece of wood. Far from it. Just a common block of
firewood, one of those thick, solid logs that are put on the fire in winter to
make cold rooms cozy and warm.
I do not know how this really happened, yet the fact remains that one fine day
this piece of wood found itself in the shop of an old carpenter. His real name
was Mastro Antonio, but everyone called him Mastro Cherry, for the tip of his
nose was so round and red and shiny that it looked like a ripe cherry.
As soon as he saw that piece of wood, Mastro Cherry was filled with joy.
Rubbing his hands together happily, he mumbled half to himself:
“This has come in the nick of time. I shall use it to make the leg of a table.”
He grasped the hatchet quickly to peel off the bark and shape the wood. But
as he was about to give it the first blow, he stood still with arm uplifted, for he
had heard a wee, little voice say in a beseeching tone: “Please be careful! Do
not hit me so hard!”
What a look of surprise shone on Mastro Cherry’s face! His funny face
became still funnier.
He turned frightened eyes about the room to find out where that wee, little
voice had come from and he saw no one! He looked under the bench−no one!
He peeped inside the closet−no one! He searched among the shavings−no
one! He opened the door to look up and down the street−and still no one!
“Oh, I see!” he then said, laughing and scratching his Wig. “It can easily be
seen that I only thought I heard the tiny voice say the words! Well, well−to
work once more.”
He struck a most solemn blow upon the piece of wood.
“Oh, oh! You hurt!” cried the same far-away little voice.

56. Mastro Cherry grew dumb, his eyes popped out of his head, his mouth opened
wide, and his tongue hung down on his chin.
As soon as he regained the use of his senses, he said, trembling and stuttering
from fright:
“Where did that voice come from, when there is no one around? Might it be
that this piece of wood has learned to weep and cry like a child? I can hardly
believe it. Here it is−a piece of common firewood, good only to burn in the
stove, the same as any other. Yet−might someone be hidden in it? If so, the
worse for him. I’ll fix him!”
With these words, he grabbed the log with both hands and started to knock it
about unmercifully. He threw it to the floor, against the walls of the room, and
even up to the ceiling.
He listened for the tiny voice to moan and cry. He waited two minutes
−nothing; five minutes−nothing; ten minutes−nothing.
“Oh, I see,” he said, trying bravely to laugh and ruffling up his wig with his
hand. “It can easily be seen I only imagined I heard the tiny voice! Well, well
−to work once more!”
The poor fellow was scared half to death, so he tried to sing a gay song in
order to gain courage.
He set aside the hatchet and picked up the plane to make the wood smooth
and even, but as he drew it to and fro, he heard the same tiny voice. This time
it giggled as it spoke:
“Stop it! Oh, stop it! Ha, ha, ha! You tickle my stomach.”
This time poor Mastro Cherry fell as if shot. When he opened his…

57. 24: DUBLINERS
by James Joyce
There was no hope for him this time: it was the third stroke. Night after night
I had passed the house (it was vacation time) and studied the lighted square of
window: and night after night I had found it lighted in the same way, faintly
and evenly. If he was dead, I thought, I would see the reflection of candles on
the darkened blind for I knew that two candles must be set at the head of a
corpse. He had often said to me: “I am not long for this world,” and I had
thought his words idle. Now I knew they were true. Every night as I gazed up
at the window I said softly to myself the word paralysis. It had always
sounded strangely in my ears, like the word gnomon in the Euclid and the
word simony in the Catechism. But now it sounded to me like the name of
some maleficent and sinful being. It filled me with fear, and yet I longed to be
nearer to it and to look upon its deadly work.
Old Cotter was sitting at the fire, smoking, when I came downstairs to supper.
While my aunt was ladling out my stirabout he said, as if returning to some
former remark of his:
“No, I wouldn’t say he was exactly… but there was something queer… there
was something uncanny about him. I’ll tell you my opinion…”
He began to puff at his pipe, no doubt arranging his opinion in his mind.
Tiresome old fool! When we knew him first he used to be rather interesting,
talking of faints and worms; but I soon grew tired of him and his endless
stories about the distillery.
“I have my own theory about it,” he said. “I think it was one of those …
peculiar cases… But it’s hard to say…”
He began to puff again at his pipe without giving us his theory. My uncle saw
me staring and said to me:
“Well, so your old friend is gone, you’ll be sorry to hear.”
“Who?” said I.
“Father Flynn.”
“Is he dead?”
“Mr. Cotter here has just told us. He was passing by the house.”
I knew that I was under observation so I continued eating as if the news had

58. not interested me. My uncle explained to old Cotter.
“The youngster and he were great friends. The old chap taught him a great
deal, mind you; and they say he had a great wish for him.”
“God have mercy on his soul,” said my aunt piously.
Old Cotter looked at me for a while. I felt that his little beady black eyes were
examining me but I would not satisfy him by looking up from my plate. He
returned to his pipe and finally spat rudely into the grate.
“I wouldn’t like children of mine,” he said, “to have too much to say to a man
like that.”
“How do you mean, Mr. Cotter?” asked my aunt.
“What I mean is,” said old Cotter, “it’s bad for children. My idea is: let a
young lad run about and play with young lads of his own age and not be…
Am I right, Jack?”
“That’s my principle, too,” said my uncle. “Let him learn to box his corner.
That’s what I’m always saying to that Rosicrucian there: take exercise. Why,
when I was a nipper every morning of my life I had a cold bath, winter and
summer. And that’s what stands to me now. Education is all very fine and
large… Mr. Cotter might take a pick of that leg mutton,” he added to my aunt.
“No, no, not for me,” said old Cotter.
My aunt brought the dish from the safe and put it on the table.
“But why do you think it’s not good for children, Mr. Cotter?” she asked.
“It’s bad for children,” said old Cotter, “because their minds are so
impressionable…

59. 25: WHAT IS COMING AFTER WWI?
by H.G. Wells
Prophecy may vary between being an intellectual amusement and a serious
occupation; serious not only in its intentions, but in its consequences. For it is
the lot of prophets who frighten or disappoint to be stoned. But for some of us
moderns, who have been touched with the spirit of science, prophesying is
almost a habit of mind.
Science is very largely analysis aimed at forecasting. The test of any scientific
law is our verification of its anticipations. The scientific training develops the
idea that whatever is going to happen is really here now− if only one could
see it. And when one is taken by surprise the tendency is not to say with the
untrained man, “Now, who’d ha’ thought it?” but “Now, what was it we
overlooked?”
Everything that has ever existed or that will ever exist is here− for anyone
who has eyes to see. But some of it demands eyes of superhuman penetration.
Some of it is patent; we are almost as certain of next Christmas and the tides
of the year 1960 and the death before 3000 A.D. of everybody now alive as if
these things had already happened. Below that level of certainty, but still at a
very high level of certainty, there are such things as that men will probably be
making airplanes of an improved pattern in 1950, or that there will be a
through railway connection between Constantinople and Bombay and
between Baku and Bombay in the next half-century. From such grades of
certainty as this, one may come down the scale until the most obscure
mystery of all is reached: the mystery of the individual. Will England
presently produce a military genius? or what will Mr. Belloc say the day after
tomorrow? The most accessible field for the prophet is the heavens; the least
is the secret of the jumping cat within the human skull. How will so-and-so
behave, and how will the nation take it? For such questions as that we need
the subtlest guesses of all.
Yet, even to such questions as these the sharp, observant man may risk an
answer with something rather better than an even chance of being right.
The present writer is a prophet by use and wont. He is more interested in
tomorrow than he is in today, and the past is just material for future guessing.
“Think of the men who have walked here!” said a tourist in the Roman
Coliseum. It was a Futurist mind that answered: “Think of the men who will.”
It is surely as interesting that presently some founder of the World Republic,

60. some obstinate opponent of militarism or legalism, or the man who will first
release atomic energy for human use, will walk along the Via Sacra as that
Cicero or Giordano Bruno or Shelley have walked there in the past. To the
prophetic mind all history is and will continue to be a prelude. The prophetic
type will steadfastly refuse to see the world as a museum; it will insist that
here is a stage set for a drama that perpetually begins.
Now this forecasting disposition has led the writer not only to publish a book
of deliberate prophesying, called “Anticipations,” but almost without
premeditation to scatter a number of more or less obvious prophecies through
his other books. From first to last he has been writing for twenty years, so that
it is possible to check a certain proportion of these anticipations by the things
that have happened. Some of these shots have hit remarkably…

61. 26: OLD GREEK STORIES
by James Baldwin
A long time ago, when the world was much younger than it is now, people
told and believed a great many wonderful stories about wonderful things
which neither you nor I have ever seen. They often talked about a certain
Mighty Being called Jupiter, or Zeus, who was king of the sky and the earth;
and they said that he sat most of the time amid the clouds on the top of a very
high mountain where he could look down and see everything that was going
on in the earth beneath. He liked to ride on the storm-clouds and hurl burning
thunderbolts right and left among the trees and rocks; and he was so very,
very mighty that when he nodded, the earth quaked, the mountains trembled
and smoked, the sky grew black, and the sun hid his face.
Jupiter had two brothers, both of them terrible fellows, but not nearly so great
as himself. The name of one of them was Neptune, or Poseidon, and he was
the king of the sea. He had a glittering, golden palace far down in the deep
sea-caves where the fishes live and the red coral grows; and whenever he was
angry the waves would rise mountain high, and the storm-winds would howl
fearfully, and the sea would try to break over the land; and men called him the
Shaker of the Earth.
The other brother of Jupiter was a sad pale-faced being, whose kingdom was
underneath the earth, where the sun never shone and where there was
darkness and weeping and sorrow all the time. His name was Pluto, or
Aidoneus, and his country was called the Lower World, or the Land of
Shadows, or Hades. Men said that whenever anyone died, Pluto would send
his messenger, or Shadow Leader, to carry that one down into his cheerless
kingdom; and for that reason they never spoke well of him, but thought of
him only as the enemy of life.
A great number of other Mighty Beings lived with Jupiter amid the clouds on
the mountain top−so many that I can name a very few only. There was Venus,
the queen of love and beauty, who was fairer by far than any woman that you
or I have ever seen. There was Athena, or Minerva, the queen of the air, who
gave people wisdom and taught them how to do very many useful things.
There was Juno, the queen of earth and sky, who sat at the right hand of
Jupiter and gave him all kinds of advice. There was Mars, the great warrior,
whose delight was in the din of battle. There was Mercury, the swift
messenger, who had wings on his cap and shoes, and who flew from place to

62. place like the summer clouds when they are driven before the wind. There
was Vulcan, a skillful blacksmith, who had his forge in a burning mountain
and wrought many wonderful things of iron and copper and gold. And besides
these, there were many others about whom you will learn by and by, and
about whom men told strange and beautiful stories.
They lived in glittering, golden mansions, high up among the clouds−so high
indeed that the eyes of men could never see them. But they could look down
and see what men were doing, and oftentimes they were said to leave their
lofty homes and wander unknown across the land or over the sea.
And of all these Mighty Folk, Jupiter was by far the mightiest.
Jupiter and his Mighty Folk had not always dwelt amid the clouds on the
mountain top. In times long past, a wonderful family called Titans had lived
there and had ruled over all the world. There…