This book deals with the history of the sewing machine.After almost a century of attempts to invent a machine that would sew, the practical sewing machine evolved in the mid-19th century.In all the preceding centuries of civilization hand sewing was exclusively employed, and it was reserved for the Nineteenth Century to relieve women from the drudgery which for so many centuries had enslaved them.Embroidery machines had been patented in England by Weisenthal in 1755...

It is now four or five years since my attention was called to the collection of native American ballads from the Southwest, already begun by Professor Lomax. At that time, he seemed hardly to appreciate their full value and importance. To my colleague, Professor G.L. Kittredge, probably the most eminent authority on folk-song in America, this value and importance appeared as indubitable as it appeared to me. We heartily joined in encouraging the work, as a real contribution both to literat...

Charlemagne,or Charles the Great, was great in war and great in peace; a great conqueror,great law-maker, great scholar, great organizer, great civilizer. He subduedsavage nations, introduced learning, extended religion, encouraged the arts andsciences, and established one of the mightiest empires of the olden times. Allthe races of Germany, of Italy, and of France were welded by him into one greatmonarchy. He maintained and extended the influence of Christian culture. Alarge part of his l...

Marathon was a plain on the North-East coast of Attica (or Attic Peninsula), divided from the plain of Athens by the range of Pentelicus. It contained four villages: Marathon, Probalinthos, Tricorythos and Oenoe, which originally formed an independent tetrapolis and in historical times still upheld peculiar rites and legendary associations, chiefly connected with Heracles and Theseus. In the 6th century B.C. it served as a base for Peisistratus, who owned much property in that district, fo...

The first domestication of the horse was one of the greatest achievements of man in the animal kingdom...If we say that of all brute animals none is more valuable to man than the horse, and that the neglect of any means which may promote and insure his welfare and efficiency is a blunder not easily distinguishable from crime, we may fairly be charged with uttering truisms. If we urge that this value is not recognized as it should be, and that this neglect is miserably common, we ma...

This book deals with the Christian philosophy of love.Jesus taught his philosophy of life in three ways: the personal, by example; the artistic, by parable; and the scientific, by propositions.The first, though most vital and effective of all, is expensive and wasteful. For in life principles are so embedded in "muddy particulars," trivial and sordid details, that they are liable to get lost. The Master may be a long time with His disciples, and yet not really be known. Eve...

In naming George Sand we name something more exceptional than even a great genius. Her rise to eminence in the literature of her century, is, if not without a parallel, yet absolutely without a precedent, in the annals of women of modern times.Upon no woman of the century has the public fixed its eye with a more eager interest and curiosity than upon Aurore Dudevant, known to the world as George Sand.The utmost heights of panegyric and adulation have been scaled in describi...

The history of dolphins is one of the most fascinating and instructive in the history of ideas in the western world. Indeed, it provides one of the most illuminating examples of what has probably occurred many times in human culture – a virtually complete loss of knowledge, at least in most segments of the culture, of what was formerly well understood by generations of men.Dolphins are mammals. They belong in the order Cetacea, suborder Odontoceti, family Delphinidae. Within the Del...

Hannibal was a Famous Carthaginian General Officer and Statesman. His influence over men is perhaps his most wonderful trait. As a distinguishing mark, we may well call him The Father of Strategy.“Son of Hamilcar Barcas, Hannibal was born in 247 B. C. At this period, Rome and Carthage were rival powers and both seated upon the borders of the Mediterranean Sea. Rome had been in existence about five hundred years, and had already extended her conquests over Italy and a portion of Spa...

Seated on the dry hill-side here, by the belted blue Mediterranean, I have picked up from the ground a bit of blanched and moldering bone, well cleaned to my hand by the unconscious friendliness of the busy ants; and looking closely at it I recognize it at once, with a sympathetic sigh, for the solid welded tail-piece of some departed British tourist swallow. He came here like ourselves, no doubt, to escape the terrors of an English winter: but among these pine-clad Provençal summits some ...

So long as man does not bother about what he is or whence he came or whither he is going, the whole thing seems as simple as the verb "to be"; and you may say that the moment he does begin thinking about what he is and whence he came and whither he is going, he gets on to a lot of roads that lead nowhere, and that spread like the fingers of a hand or the sticks of a fan; so that if he pursues two or more of them he soon gets beyond his straddle, and if he pursues only one he gets farther a...

This book deals with the life of Florence Nightingale, the famous nurse.Everyone knows the popular conception of Florence Nightingale. The saintly, self-sacrificing woman, the delicate maiden of high degree who threw aside the pleasures of a life of ease to succor the afflicted, the Lady with the Lamp, gliding through the horrors of the hospital at Scutari, and consecrating with the radiance of her goodness the dying soldier's couch—the vision is familiar to all. But the truth was ...