By the Same Author
EDGE-TOOLS OF SPEECH.
One fine octavo volume. $3.50.
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"'Edge-Tools of Speech' is one of the best books of quotation in the language.
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"He has classified his quotations alphabetically under the head of subjects
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sayings bearing on each subject. Thus the word 'Ability' is made the
text of wise utterances from Napoleon I., Dr. Johnson, Wendell Phillips, Longfellow,
Maclaren, Gail Hamilton, Froude, Beaconsfield, Zoroaster, Schopenhauer,
La Rochefoucauld, Matthew Wren, Gibbon, and Aristotle. It has no
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"To open it at random anywhere is to chance upon the wisdom of the ages.
Every important authority of every age and clime is represented. The choicest
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GENIUS
IN SUNSHINE AND SHADOW
BY
MATURIN M. BALLOU
AUTHOR OF "EDGE-TOOLS OF SPEECH," ETC.
'Tis in books the chief
Of all perfection to be plain and brief.
Butler
BOSTON
TICKNOR AND COMPANY
1887
[iv]Copyright, 1886,
By Maturin M. Ballou.
All rights reserved.
University Press:
John Wilson and Son, Cambridge.
PREFACE.
The volume in hand might perhaps better havebeen entitled "Library Notes," as the pages are literallythe gathered notes of the author's library-hours.The reader will kindly peruse these pages rememberingthat they assume only to be the gossip, as it were,of the author with himself,—notes which have grownto these proportions by casual accumulation in thecourse of other studies, and without consecutive purpose.That these notes thus made have been putinto printed form, is owing to the publisher's chanceknowledge and hearty approval of them. These fewlines are by way, not of apology,—no sensible personever made an apology, according to Mr. Emerson,—butof introduction; so that the reader may not fancyhe is to encounter a labored essay upon the themesuggested by the title of the volume.
These pages may not be without a certain wholesomeinfluence, if, fortunately, they shall incite othersto analyze the character of genius as exhibit