Category: Evening Book

There are some things in this world which astonished me when I first opened my eyes upon it, and which I have never since been able to understand. One of these is the popular ridicule about the business of a tailor. The arts and crafts of all alike refer to one grand object, the convenience […]

The following event, which occurred during the remarkably hard winter of 1708-9, is recorded on the most unquestionable authority. A poor woman in Somersetshire, England, having been to a neigh-boring village to sell her yarn, in her return home fell so very ill that she was forced to take refuge in a small house by […]

The Bushmen appear to be the remains of Hottentot hordes, originally subsisting, like all the aboriginal tribes of Southern Africa, chiefly by rearing cattle; but who have been driven, chiefly by the gradual encroachments of the European colonists, to seek for refuge among the inaccessible rocks and sterile deserts of the interior. Most of the […]

From the works of Don Juarros Ancient city of Utatlan. This was the capital of the native kings of Quiche, and covered the extensive plain on which now stands the village of Santa Cruz del Quiche. The centre of the city was occupied by the royal palace. The streets were very narrow, but the place […]

I was bred up in the dislike of the marvellous, or the stupid wonderful, as my uncle called it. I must relate an anecdote in point. Some gentlemen were dining together, and relating their travelling adventures; one of them dealt so much in the marvellous, that it induced another to give him a lesson. ” […]

In the whole circle of our manufactures there is not any thing more curious than the one that is depicted in the above engraving. Materials which appear of themselves but little fitted for any useful purpose, are blended together so as to form corn-pounds of a new and entirely distinct character. Indeed, an uninitiated person […]

(From Moore’s Evenings in Greece.) Ah ! where are they who heard, in former hours, file voice of song in these neglected bowers ? They are gone—they are all gone ! The youth, who told his pain in such sweet tone, That all who heard him wished his pain their own, He is gone—he is […]

The following interesting anecdote occurs in a German work, lately published, entitled A Picture of St. Petersburgh. In a little town, five miles from St. Petersburgh, lived a poor German woman. A small cottage was her only possession, and the visits of a few shipmasters, on their way to Petersburgh, her only livelihood. Several Dutch […]

On the 14th of March, 1792, the Commissioners of the City of Washington offered a premium, by advertisement in the public papers, for a plan for the President’s house, and another for a design for the Capitol, to be presented on the 15th July. The plan for the President’s house, presented by Capt. James Hoban, […]

The banana and the bread-fruit are examples of extraordinary vegetable fruitfulness, with very little assistance from the care of man. The banana is not known in an uncultivated state; and those who principally depend upon the plant for subsistence propagate it by suckers. But here the labor of cultivation almost ends; and M. Humboldt has […]