Across the Plains: With Other Memories and EssaysCosimo Classics, 1892 - 286 psl. "America was to me a sort of promised land; 'westward the march of empire holds its way'; the race is for the moment to the young; what has been and what is we imperfectly and obscurely know; what is to be yet lies beyond the flight of our imaginations. . . " Robert Louis Stevenson, The Amateur Emigrant Across the Plains with Other Memories and Essays (1892) by Robert Louis Stevenson is the second book in a trilogy that began with The Amateur Emigrant and ended with The Silverado Squatters and in which the author described his travels in the United States. Each of the 12 chapters is a self-contained essay that discusses a particular aspect of what Stevenson observed as he traveled by train from New York to California. They give a fascinating view of what travel was in the late Victorian period from the perspective of a Scottish visitor. |
Kiti leidimai - Peržiūrėti viską
Pagrindiniai terminai ir frazės
American Anstruther Anstruther Easter Arethusa artist awake Barbizon beggar behold Bob Bain Brownies Cellardyke Cernay Charles of Orleans Châtillon-sur-Loing child Chinese coloured Commissary conceived dark delight desert dream dreamer Dubuque emigrant empty English face Fair Isle fancy farther fire Fontainebleau forest gendarme gentleman Gretz hand heart heaven honour hour Indian INLAND VOYAGE journey knapsack land lantern least live look Maréchal-des-logis memory Mexican mind Monterey morning ness never newsboy night once Pacific painter passed PAUL BOURGET perhaps plain pleasant pleasure poor race river ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON sand scarce scene seemed seen smoke station stood story strange streets suppose talk taste TAUCHNITZ tell thing thought Toano town train trees turn UPOLU voice walk whole wind window woods words young youth
Populiarios ištraukos
256 psl. - ... to earn a little and to spend a little less, to make upon the whole a family happier for his presence, to renounce when that shall be necessary and not be embittered, to keep a few friends but these without capitulation — above all, on the same grim condition, to keep friends with himself — here is a task for all that a man has of fortitude and delicacy.
264 psl. - There falls on the old, gray city An influence luminous and serene, A shining peace. The smoke ascends In a rosy-and-golden haze. The spires Shine and are changed In the valley Shadows rise. The lark sings on. The sun Closing his benediction, Sinks, and the darkening air Thrills with a sense of the triumphing night — Night with her train of stars And her great gift of sleep. So be my passing! My task accomplished and the long day done, My wages taken, and in my heart Some late lark singing, Let...
257 psl. - If your morals make you dreary, depend upon it they are wrong. I do not say "give them up," for they may be all you have; but conceal them like a vice, lest they should spoil the lives of better and simpler people.
248 psl. - Ah! if I could show you this! if I could show you these men and women, all the world over, in every stage of history, under every abuse of error, under every circumstance of failure, without hope, without help, without thanks, still obscurely fighting the lost fight of virtue, still clinging, in the brothel or on the scaffold, to some rag of honor, the poor jewel of their souls...
178 psl. - The essence of this bliss was to walk by yourself in the black night; the slide shut, the top-coat buttoned; not a ray escaping, whether to conduct your footsteps or to make your glory public: a mere pillar of darkness in the dark; and all the while, deep down in the privacy of your fool's heart, to know you had a bull's-eye at your belt, and to exult and sing over the knowledge. II It is said that a poet has died young in the breast of the most stolid.
193 psl. - ... stories laid in that period of English history, began to rule the features of his dreams ; so that he masqueraded there in a three-cornered hat, and was much engaged with Jacobite conspiracy between the hour for bed and that for breakfast. About the same time, he began to read in his dreams — tales, for the most part, and for the most part after the manner of GPR James, but so incredibly more vivid and moving than any printed book, that he has ever since been malcontent with literature.
28 psl. - Hour after hour it was the same unhomely and unkindly world about our onward path ; tumbled boulders, cliffs that drearily imitate the shape of monuments and fortifications — how drearily, how tamely, none can tell who has not seen them ; not a tree, not a patch of sward, not one shapely or commanding mountain form ; sage-brush, eternal sage-brush ; over all, the same weariful and gloomy colouring...
30 psl. - Gates; how at each stage of the construction, roaring, impromptu cities, full of gold and lust and death, sprang up and then died away again, and are now but wayside stations in the desert; how in these uncouth places pig-tailed Chinese pirates worked side...
217 psl. - VTOU should have heard him speak of what •*• he loved ; of the tent pitched beside the talking water ; of the stars overhead at night ; of the blest return of morning, the peep of day over the moors, the awaking birds among the birches ; how he abhorred the long winter shut in cities ; and with what delight, at the return of the spring, he once more pitched his camp in the living out-of-doors.