American Literature
Posts in The Copybook tagged ‘American Literature’
American essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson praises the English public for still loving freedom, despite their politicians.
American essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) saw the English as a people much less biased and belligerent than their political masters. Liberty was safe, Emerson believed, while Englishmen still craved not influence abroad, but independence at home.
As proof that ‘Providence protects children and idiots’, Mark Twain recalls his first taste of ten-pin bowling.
Mark Twain was invited by fellow office-workers to go bowling with them. He declined as he knew nothing of the game, but now they seemed so anxious for his company that he was rather flattered, and gave in.
Mark Twain covets the supreme sensation of being a trailblazer.
On a visit to Rome, American novelist Mark Twain reflects (tongue-in-cheek) that everything in that ancient city has been seen before by someone. How much better, he suggests, to be an idle Roman, for then all the undiscovered secrets of the New World would be yours to find!
Mark Twain’s attention was drawn off people-watching for a moment by an extraordinarily lifelike machine.
At the World’s Fair in Paris in 1867, American novelist Mark Twain saw a remarkable ‘automaton’, a silver swan that seemed for all the world like a living thing. But the incorrigible people-watcher could not keep his attention fixed even on that.