In the appendix to Croker’s Boswell’s Johnson one finds this anecdote: CATO’S SOLILOQUY.—One day Mrs. Gastrel set a little girl to repeat to him [Dr. Samuel Johnson] Cato’s Soliloquy, w...

When I say that I never knew my austere father to be enamoured of but one poem in all the long half century that he lived, persons who knew him will easily believe me; when I say that I...

“Now that corpse,” said the undertaker, patting the folded hands of deceased approvingly, was a brick-every way you took him he was a brick. He was so real accommodating, and so modest-...

In Philadelphia they have a custom which it would be pleasant to see adopted throughout the land. It is that of appending to published death-notices a little verse or two of comforting ...

I found that a person of large intelligence could read this beautiful language with considerable facility without a dictionary, but I presently found that to such a parson a grammar cou...

“I was sitting here,” said the judge, “in this old pulpit, holding court, and we were trying a big, wicked-looking Spanish desperado for killing the husband of a bright, pretty Mexican ...

Belfast is a peculiarly religious community. This may be said of the whole of the North of Ireland. About one-half of the people are Protestants and the other half Catholics. Each party...

“MORAL STATISTICIAN.”—I don’t want any of your statistics; I took your whole batch and lit my pipe with it. I hate your kind of people. You are always ciphering out how much a man’s hea...

I was spending the month of March 1892 at Mentone, in the Riviera. At this retired spot one has all the advantages, privately, which are to be had publicly at Monte Carlo and Nice, a fe...

It is almost a fortnight now that I am domiciled in a medieval villa in the country, a mile or two from Florence. I cannot speak the language; I am too old not to learn how, also too bu...

Thirty-five years ago I was out prospecting on the Stanislaus, tramping all day long with pick and pan and horn, and washing a hatful of dirt here and there, always expecting to make a ...

At that time, in Kentucky (said the Hon. Mr. K- - - - ); the law was very strict against what is termed “games of chance.” About a dozen of the boys were detected playing “seven up” or ...

Being told I would be expected to talk here, I inquired what sort of talk I ought to make. They said it should be something suitable to youth-something didactic, instructive, or somethi...

Good-bye! a kind good-bye, I bid you now, my friend, And though ’tis sad to speak the w… To destiny I bend And though it be decreed by Fate

In the early eighties Mark Twain learned to ride one of the old high-wheel bicycles of that period. He wrote an account of his experience, but did not offer it for publication. The form...