There is what I call the American idea.... This idea demands, as the proximate organization thereof, a democracy—that is, a government of all the people, by all the people, for all the people; of course, a government of the principles of eternal justice, the unchanging law of God: for shortness’ sake I will call it the idea of Freedom.
“Speech at the N. E. Anti-slavery Convention, Boston,” May 29, 1850.—Theodore Parker.
Theodore Parker, an American preacher and reformer of great celebrity, was born at Lexington, Mass., August 24, 1810, and died at Florence, May 10, 1860. He wrote: “Ten Sermons on Religion,” “Theism, Atheism and the Popular Theology,” and his most celebrated work: “Discourse on Matters Pertaining to Religion.”
With the greatest possible solicitude avoid authorship. Too early or immoderately employed it makes the head waste and the heart empty.
Tr. by S. T. Coleridge.—Herder.
John Gottfried von Herder, a distinguished German philosopher and historian of literature, was born at Mohrungen, August 25, 1744, and died at Weimar, December 18, 1803. Among his works are: “Voices of Nations in Song,” “Fragments on Recent German Literature,” “The Cid,” “Ideas for a Philosophy of the History of Mankind,” “Spirit of Hebrew Poetry,” etc.
Which I wish to remark,—
And my language is plain,—
That for ways that are dark
And for tricks that are vain,
The heathen Chinee is peculiar.
“Plain Language from Truthful James,”—Francis Bret Harte.
Francis Bret Harte, a celebrated American poet and short-story writer, was born in Albany, N. Y., August 25, 1839, and died in 1902. Among his many works are: “The Luck of Roaring Camp, and Other Sketches,” “The Heathen Chinee,” “Plain Language from Truthful James,” “Poems,” “East and West Poems,” “Echoes of the Foot-Hills,” “Poetical Works,” “Thankful Blossom,” “Drift from Two Shores,” “Flip and Other Stories,” “By Shore and Sedge,” “The Queen of the Pirate Isle,” “On the Frontier,” “Snow Bound at Eagle’s,” “Tales of the Argonauts and Other Sketches,” “A Waif of the Plains,” “Three Partners,” and “In the Hollow of the Hills.”
It is even at the present day important to direct careful attention to an erroneous conception of wealth, which was universal until the appearance of Adam Smith’s great work, in 1775.