John Burroughs, a famous American essayist, was born in Roxbury, N. Y., April 3, 1837, and died in 1921. He has written: “Winter Sunshine,” “Fresh Fields,” “Wake-Robin,” “Birds and Poets,” “Locusts and Wild Honey,” “Sharp Eyes,” “Signs and Seasons,” “Riverely,” “The Light of Day,” “Ways of Nature,” “Camping and Tramping with Roosevelt,” “Under the Apple Trees,” etc.
There must always be, we presume, however age and experience may modify nature, a certain inability on the part of a woman to appreciate the more riotous forms of mirth, and that robust freedom in morals which bolder minds admire. It is a disability which nothing can abolish.
—Mrs. Oliphant.
Margaret Wilson Oliphant, a well-known Scotch novelist, was born April 4, 1828, and died in 1897. Among her numerous works may be mentioned: “Zaidee,” “The Story of Valentine and His Brother,” “In Trust,” “A House Divided Against Itself,” “Sir Tom,” “The Cuckoo in the Nest,” “English Literature at the End of the Eighteenth and Beginning of the Nineteenth Century,” “Victorian Age of English Literature,” “Makers of Florence, Venice, and Rome,” “The Reign of Queen Anne,” “The Makers of Modern Rome,” “William Blackwood and His Sons,” etc.
For words are wise men’s counters,—they do but reckon by them; but they are the money of fools.
“The Leviathan,” Part i, Chap. iv,—Thomas Hobbes.
Thomas Hobbes, a renowned English philosopher, was born in Malmesbury, April 5, 1588, and died at Hardwick Hall, Derbyshire, December 4, 1679. A few of his many works are: “De Cive,” “Human Nature,” “De Corpore Politico,” and “Leviathan, or the Matter, Form, and Power of a Commonwealth,” considered his masterpiece.
For blessings ever wait on virtuous deeds,
And though a late, a sure reward succeeds.
“The Mourning Bride,” Act V, Sc. xii.—Congreve.
William Congreve, an eminent English dramatist, was born in Bardsley, near Leeds, April 5, 1670, and died at London, January 19, 1729. Among his comedies are: “The Double Dealer,” “The Mourning Bride,” “The Old Bachelor,” and “Love for Love.”