Ella Wheeler Wilcox - "Poems of Purpose"

G. A. Henty - "In Freedom's Cause"

Mrs. George Sheldon - "Katherine's Sheaves"

Walter Lippmann - "Public Opinion"

New Philadelphia Book Publisher Highlights Local Talent
Book and Publishing News from Publishers Newswire(tm)

Looking for Child to be on Cover of a New Book, 'The Model Child'
PHILADELPHIA, Pa. -- The Philadelphia literary world will celebrate the launch of two new players today, April 10th: Kay Square Press, a new publishing company focused on Philadelphia-area artists, their stories, and their art; and Kay Square's first release, 'With the Rich and Mighty: Emlen Etting of Philadelphia' (ISBN: 978-0-9815129-0-7), a critical biography by Kenneth C. Kaleta.

FlatSigned Press Alleges Don Imus Remarks Damage Legacy of President Gerald R. Ford
NEW YORK, N.Y. -- Nathan Yungerberg, an accomplished model scout and professional child photographer is launching a nation-wide casting call to find the cover model for his highly anticipated book release, 'The Model Child: A Parents Guide to the Child Modeling Industry' (ISBN: 978-0-9817018-0-6).

Books: Hypatia

C >> Charles Kingsley >> Hypatia




'Well!--you have sold your fancied personality dear! How many dead
men? .... Nine .... Eleven! Conceited fellow! Who told you that
your one life was worth the eleven which you have taken?'

Bran went up to the corpse--perhaps from its sitting posture
fancying it still living--smelt the cold cheek, and recoiled with a
mournful whine.

'Eh? That is the right way to look at the phenomena, is it? Well,
after all, I am sorry for you .... almost like you .... All your
wounds in front, as a man's should be. Poor fop! Lais and Thais
will never curl those dainty ringlets for you again! What is that
bas-relief upon your shield? Venus receiving Psyche into the abode
of the gods! .... Ah! you have found out all about Psyche's wings
by this time .... How do I know that? And yet, why am I, in spite
of my common sense--if I have any--talking to you as you, and liking
you, and pitying you, if you are nothing now, and probably never
were anything? Bran! What right had you to pity him without giving
your reasons in due form, as Hypatia would have done? Forgive me,
sir, however--whether you exist or not, I cannot leave that collar
round your neck for these camp-wolves to convert into strong
liquor.'

And as he spoke, he bent down, and detached, gently enough, a
magnificent necklace.

'Not for myself, I assure you. Like Ate's golden apple, it shall go
to the fairest. Here, Bran!' And he wreathed the jewels round the
neck of the mastiff, who, evidently exalted in her own eyes by the
burden, leaped and barked forward again, taking, apparently as a
matter of course, the road back towards Ostia, by which they had
come thither from the sea. And as he followed, careless where he
went, he continued talking to himself aloud after the manner of
restless self-discontented men.

....'And then man talks big about his dignity and his intellect, and
his heavenly parentage, and his aspirations after the unseen, and
the beautiful, and the infinite--and everything else unlike himself.
How can he prove it? Why, these poor blackguards lying about are
very fair specimens of humanity.--And how much have they been
bothered since they were born with aspirations after anything
infinite, except infinite sour wine? To eat, to drink; to destroy a
certain number of their species; to reproduce a certain number of
the same, two-thirds of whom will die in infancy, a dead waste of
pain to their mothers and of expense to their putative sires ....
and then--what says Solomon? What befalls them befalls beasts. As
one dies, so dies the other; so that they have all one breath, and a
man has no pre-eminence over a beast; for all is vanity. All go to
one place; all are of the dust, and turn to dust again. Who knows
that the breath of man goes upward, and that the breath of the beast
goes downward to the earth? Who, indeed, my most wise ancestor?
Not I, certainly. Raphael Aben-Ezra, how art thou better than a
beast? W hat pre-eminence hast thou, not merely over this dog, But
over the fleas whom thou so wantonly cursest? Man must painfully
win house, clothes, fire .... A pretty proof of his wisdom, when
every flea has the wit to make my blanket, without any labour of his
own, lodge him a great deal better than it lodges me! Man makes
clothes, and the fleas live in them .... Which is the wiser of the
two? ....

'Ah, but--man is fallen .... Well--and the flea is not. So much
better he than the man; for he is what he was intended to be, and so
fulfils the very definition of virtue. which no one can say of us of
the red-ochre vein. And even if the old myth be true, and the man
only fell, because he was set to do higher work than the flea, what
does that prove--but that he could not do it?

'But his arts and his sciences? .... Apage! The very sound of
those grown-children's rattles turns me sick .... One conceited ass
in a generation increasing labour and sorrow, and dying after all even
as the fool dies, and ten million brutes and slaves, just where their
fore-fathers were, and where their children will be after them, to
the end of the farce .... The thing that has been, it is that which
shall be; and there is no new thing under the sun....

'And as for your palaces, and cities, and temples .... look at this
Campagna, and judge. Flea-bites go down after a while--and so do
they. What are they but the bumps which we human fleas make in the
old earth's skin?. Make them? We only cause them, as fleas cause
flea-bites .... What are all the works of man, but a sort of
cutaneous disorder in this unhealthy earth-hide, and we a race of
larger fleas, running about among its fur, which we call trees? Why
should not the earth be an animal? How do I know it is not?
Because it is too big? Bah! What is big, and what is little?
Because it has not the shape of one? .... Look into a fisherman's
net, and see what forms are there! Because it does not speak? ....
Perhaps it has nothing to say, being too busy. Perhaps it can talk
no more sense than we .... In both cases it shows its wisdom by
holding its tongue. Because it moves in one necessary direction?
.... How do I know that it does? How can I tell that it is not
flirting with all the seven spheres at once, at this moment? But if
it does--so much the wiser of it, if that be the best direction for
it. Oh, what a base satire on ourselves and our notions of the fair
and fitting, to say that a thing cannot be alive and rational, just
because it goes steadily on upon its own road, instead of skipping
and scrambling fantastically up and down without method or order,
like us and the fleas, from the cradle to the grave! Besides, if
you grant, with the rest of the world, that fleas are less noble
than we, because they are our parasites, then you are bound to grant
that we are less noble than the earth, because we are its parasites.
.... Positively, it looks more probable than anything I have seen
for many a day .... And, by the bye, why should not earthquakes,
and floods, and pestilences, be only just so many ways which the
cunning old brute earth has of scratching herself when the human
fleas and their palace and city bites get too troublesome?'

At a turn of the road he was aroused from this profitable meditation
by a shriek, the shrillness of which told him that it was a woman's.
He looked up, and saw close to him, among the smouldering ruins of a
farmhouse, two ruffians driving before them a young girl, with her
hands tied behind her, while the poor creature was looking back
piteously after something among the ruins, and struggling in vain,
bound as she was, to escape from her captors and return.

'Conduct unjustifiable in any fleas,--eh, Bran? How do I know that,
though? Why should it not be a piece of excellent fortune for her,
if she had but the equanimity to see it? Why--what will happen to
her? She will betaken to Rome, and sold as a slave .... And in
spite of a few discomforts in the transfer, and the prejudice which
some persons have against standing an hour on the catasta to be
handled from head to foot in the minimum of clothing, she will most
probably end in being far better housed, fed, bedizened, and
pampered to her heart's desire, than ninety-nine out of a hundred of
her sister fleas .... till she begins to grow old .... which she
must do in any case....And if she have not contrived to wheedle her
master out of her liberty, and to make tip a pretty little purse of
savings, by that time--why, it is her own fault. Eh, Bran?'

But Bran by no means agreed with his view of the case; for after
watching the two ruffians, with her head stuck on one side, for a
minute or two, she suddenly and silently, after the manner of
mastiffs, sprang upon them, and dragged one to the ground.

'Oh! that is the "fit and beautiful," in this case, as they say in
Alexandria, is it? Well--I obey. You are at least a more practical
teacher than ever Hypatia was. Heaven grant that there may be no
more of them in the ruins!'

And rushing on the second plunderer, he laid him dead with a blow of
his dagger, and then turned to the first, whom Bran was holding down
by the throat.

'Mercy, mercy!' shrieked the wretch. 'Life! only life!'

'There was a fellow half a mile back begging me to kill him: with
which of you two am I to agree?--for you can't both be right.'

'Life! Only life!'

'A carnal appetite, which man must learn to conquer,' said Raphael,
as he raised the poniard. .... In a moment it was over, and Bran
and he rose--Where was the girl? She had rushed back to the ruins,
whither Raphael followed her; while Bran ran to the puppies, which
he had laid upon a stone, and commenced her maternal cares.

'What do you want, my poor girl?' asked he in Latin. 'I will not
hurt you.'

'My father! My father!'

He untied her bruised and swollen wrists; and without stopping to
thank him, she ran to a heap of fallen stones and beams, and began
digging wildly with all her little strength, breathlessly calling
'Father!'

'Such is the gratitude of flea to flea! What is there, now, in the
mere fact of being accustomed to call another person father, and not
master, or slave, which should produce such passion as that? ....
Brute habit! .... What services can the said man render, or have
rendered, which make him worth--Here is Bran! .... What do you
think of that, my female philosopher?'

Bran sat down and watched too. The poor girl's tender hands were
bleeding from the stones, while her golden tresses rolled down over
her eyes, and entangled in her impatient fingers; but still she
worked frantically. Bran seemed suddenly to comprehend the case,
rushed to the rescue, and began digging too, with all her might.

Raphael rose with a shrug, and joined in the work.
...............

'Hang these brute instincts! They make one very hot. What was
that?'

A feeble moan rose from under the stones. A human limb was
uncovered. The girl threw herself on the place, shrieking her
father's name. Raphael put her gently back and exerting his whole
strength, drew out of the ruins a stalwart elderly man, in the dress
of an officer of high rank.

He still breathed. The girl lifted up his head and covered him with
wild kisses. Raphael looked round for water; found a spring and a
broken sherd, and bathed the wounded man's temples till he opened
his eyes and showed signs of returning life.

The girl still sat by him, fondling her recovered treasure, and
bathing the grizzled face in holy tears.

'It is no business of mine,' said Raphael. 'Come, Bran!'

The girl sprang up, threw herself at his feet, kissed his hands,
called him her saviour, her deliverer, sent by God.

'Not in the least, my child. You must thank my teacher the dog, not
me.'

And she took him at his word, and threw her soft arms round Bran's
Deck; and Bran understood it, and wagged her tail, and licked the
gentle face lovingly.

'Intolerably absurd, all this!' said Raphael. 'I must be going,
Bran.'

'You will not leave us? You surely will not leave an old man to die
here?'

'Why not? What better thing could happen to him?'

'Nothing,' murmured the officer, who had not spoken before.

'Ah, God! he is my father!'

'Well?'

'He is my father!'

'Well?'

'You must save him! You shall, I say!' And she seized Raphael's
arm in the imperiousness of her passion.

He shrugged his shoulders: but felt, he knew not why, marvellously
inclined to obey her.

'I may as well do this as anything else, having nothing else to do.
Whither now, sir?'

'Whither you will. Our troops are disgraced, our eagles taken. We
are your prisoners by right of war. We follow you.'

'Oh, my fortune! A new responsibility! Why cannot I stir, without
live animals, from fleas upward, attaching. themselves to me? Is it
not enough to have nine blind puppies at my back, and an old brute
at my heels, who will persist in saving my life, that I must be
burdened over and above with a respectable elderly rebel and his
daughter? Why am I not allowed by fate to care for nobody but
myself? Sir, I give you both your freedom. The world is wide
enough for us all. I really ask no ransom.'

'You seem philosophically disposed, my friend.'

'I? Heaven forbid! I have gone right through that slough, and come
out sheer on the other side. For sweeping the last lingering taint
of it out of me, I have to thank, not sulphur and exorcisms, but
your soldiers and their morning's work. Philosophy is superfluous
in a world where all are fools.'

'Do you include yourself under that title?'

'Most certainly, my best sir. Don't fancy that I make any
exceptions. If I can in any way prove my folly to you, I will do
it.'

'Then help me and my daughter to Ostia.'

'A very fair instance. Well--my dog happens to be going that way;
and after all, you seem to have a sufficient share of human
imbecility to be a very fit companion for me. I hope, though, you
do not set up for a wise man!'

'God knows--no! Am I not of Heraclian's army?'

'True; and the young lady here made herself so great a fool about
you, that she actually infected the very dog.'

'So we three fools will forth together.'

'And the greatest one, as usual, must help the rest. But I have
nine puppies in my family already. How am I to carry you and them?'

'I will take them,' said the girl; and Bran, after looking on at the
transfer with a somewhat dubious face, seemed to satisfy herself
that all was right, and put her head contentedly under the girl's
hand.

'Eh? You trust her, Bran?' said Raphael, in an undertone. 'I must
really emancipate myself from your instructions if you require a
similar simplicity in me. Stay! there wanders a mule without a
rider; we may as well press into the service.'

He caught the mule, lifted the wounded man into the saddle, and the
cavalcade set forth, turning out of the highroad into a by-lane,
which the officer, who seemed to know the country thoroughly,
assured would lead them to Ostia by an unfrequented route.

'If we arrive there before sundown, we are saved,' said he.

'And in the meantime,' answered Raphael, 'between the dog and this
dagger, which, as I take care to inform all comers, is delicately
poisoned, we may keep ourselves clear of marauders. And yet, what a
meddling fool I am!' he went on to himself. 'What possible interest
can I have in this uncircumcised rebel! The least evil is, that if
we are taken, which we most probably shall be, I shall be crucified
for helping to escape. But even if we get safe off--here is a fresh
tie between me and those very brother fleas, to be rid of whom I
have chosen beggary and starvation. Who knows where it may end?
Pooh! The man is like other men. He is certain, before the day is
over, to prove ungrateful, or attempt the mountebank-heroic, or give
me some other excuse for bidding good-evening. And in the meantime
there is something quaint in the fact of finding so sober a
respectability, with a young daughter too, abroad on this fool's
errand, which really makes me curious to discover with what variety
of flea I am to class him.'

But while Aben-Ezra was talking to himself about the father, he
could not help, somehow, thinking about the daughter. Again and
again he found himself looking at her. She was, undeniably, most
beautiful. Her features were not as regularly perfect as Hypatia's,
nor her stature so commanding; but her face shone with a clear and
joyful determination, and with a tender and modest thoughtfulness,
such as he had never beheld before united in one countenance; and as
she stepped along, firmly and lightly, by her father's side, looping
up her scattered tresses as she went, laughing at the struggles of
her noisy burden, and looking up with rapture at her father's
gradually brightening face, Raphael could not help stealing glance
after glance, and was surprised to find them returned with a bright,
honest, smiling gratitude, which met full-eyed, as free from prudery
as it was from coquetry .... 'A lady she is,' said he to himself;
'but evidently no city one. There is nature--or something else,
there, pure and unadulterated, without any of man's additions or
beautifications.' And as he looked, he began to feel it a pleasure
such as his weary heart had not known for many a year, simply to
watch her....

'Positively there is a foolish enjoyment after all in making other
fleas smile .... Ass that I am! As if I had not drunk all that
ditch-water cup to the dregs years ago!'

They went on for some time in silence, till the officer, turning to
him--

'And may I ask you, my quaint preserver, whom I would have thanked
before but for this foolish faintness, which is now going off, what
and who you are?'

'A flea, sir--a flea--nothing more.'

'But a patrician flea, surely, to judge by your language and
manners?'

'Not that exactly. True, I have been rich, as the saying is; I may
be rich again, they tell me, when I am fool enough to choose.'

'Oh if we were but rich!' sighed the girl.

'You would be very unhappy, my dear young lady. Believe a flea who
has tried the experiment thoroughly.'

'Ah! but we could ransom my brother! and now we can find no money
till we get back to Africa.'

'And none then,' said the officer, in a low voice. 'You forget, my
poor child, that I mortgaged the whole estate to raise my legion.
We must not shrink from looking at things as they are.'

'Ah! and he is prisoner! he will be sold for a slave--perhaps--ah!
perhaps crucified, for he is not a Roman! Oh, he will be
crucified!' and she burst into an agony of weeping....Suddenly she
dashed away her tears and looked up clear and bright once more.

'No! forgive me, father! God will protect His own!'

'My dear young lady,' said Raphael, 'if you really dislike such a
prospect for your brother, and are in want of a few dirty coins
wherewith to prevent it, perhaps I may be able to find you them in
Ostia.'

She looked at incredulously, as her eye glanced over his rags, and
then, blushing, begged his pardon for her unspoken thoughts.

'Well, as you choose to suppose. But my dog has been so civil to
you already, that perhaps she may have no objection to make you a
present of that necklace of hers. I will go to the Rabbis, and we
will make all right; so don't cry. I hate crying; and the puppies
are quite chorus enough for the present tragedy.'

'The Rabbis? Are you a Jew?' asked the officer.

'Yes, sir, a Jew. And you, I presume, a Christian: perhaps you may
have scruples about receiving--your sect has generally none about
taking--from one of our stubborn and unbelieving race. Don't be
frightened, though, for your conscience; I assure you I am no more a
Jew at heart than I am a Christian.'

'God help you then!'

'Some one, or something, has helped me a great deal too much, for
three-and-thirty years of pampering. But, pardon me, that was a
strange speech for a Christian.'

'You must be a good Jew, sir, before you can be a good Christian.'

'Possibly. I intend to be neither--nor a good Pagan either. My
dear sir, let us drop the subject. It is beyond me. If I can be as
good a brute animal as my dog there--it being first demonstrated
that it is good to be good--I shall be very well content.'

The officer looked down on with a stately, loving sorrow. Raphael
caught his eye, and felt that he was in the presence of no common
man.

'I must take care what I say here, I suspect, or I shall be
entangled shortly in a regular Socratic dialogue .... And now, sir,
may I return your question, and ask who and what are you? I really
have no intention of giving you up to any Caesar, Antiochus,
Tiglath-Pileser, or other flea-devouring flea .... They will fatten
well enough without your blood. So I only ask as a student of the
great nothing-in-general, which men call the universe.'

'I was prefect of a legion this morning. What I am now, you know as
well as I.'

'Just what I do not. I am in deep wonder at seeing your hilarity,
when, by all flea-analogies, you ought to be either be howling your
fate like Achilles on the shores of Styx, or pretending to grin and
bear it, as I was taught to do when I played at Stoicism. You are
not of that sect certainly, for you confessed yourself a fool just
now.'

'And it would be long, would it not, before you made one of them do
as much? Well, be it so. A fool I am; yet, if God helps us as far
as Ostia, why should I not be cheerful?'

'Why should you?'

'What better thing can happen to a fool, than that God should teach
that he is one, when he fancied himself the wisest of the wise?
Listen to me, sir. Four mouths ago I was blessed with health,
honour, lands, friends--all for which the heart of man could wish.
And if, for an insane ambition, I have chosen to risk all those,
against the solemn warnings of the truest friend, and the wisest
saint who treads this earth of God's--should I not rejoice to have
it proved to me, even by such a lesson as this, that the friend who
never deceived me before was right in this case too; and that the
God who has checked and turned me for forty years of wild toil and
warfare, whenever I dared to do what was right in the sight of my
own eyes, has not forgotten me yet, or given up the thankless task
of my education?'

'And who, pray, is this peerless friend?'

'Augustine of Hippo.'

'Humph! It had been better for the world in general, if the great
dialectician had exerted his powers of persuasion on Heraclian
himself.'

'He did so, but in vain.'

'I don't doubt it. I know the sleek Count well enough to judge what
effect a sermon would have upon that smooth vulpine determination of
his .... "An instrument in the hands of God, my dear brother ....
We must obey His call, even to the death," etc. etc.' And Raphael
laughed bitterly.

'You know the Count?'

'As well, sir, as I care to know any man.'

'I am sorry for your eyesight, then, sir,' said the Prefect
severely, 'if it has been able to discern no more than that in so
august a character.'

'My dear sir, I do not doubt his excellence--nay, his inspiration.
How well he divined the perfectly fit moment for stabbing his old
comrade Stilicho! But really, as two men of the world, we must be
aware by this time that every man has his price.'....

'Oh, hush! hush!' whispered the girl. 'You cannot guess how you pain
him. He worships the Count. It was not ambition, as he pretends,
but merely loyalty to him, which brought here against his will.'

'My dear madam, forgive me. For your sake I am silent.'....

'For her sake! A pretty speech for me! What next?' said he to
himself. 'Ah, Bran, Bran, this is all your fault!'

'For my sake! Oh, why not for your own sake? How sad to hear one--
one like you, only sneering and speaking evil!'

'Why then? If fools are fools, and one can safely call them so, why
not do it?'

'Ah,--if God was merciful enough to send down His own Son to die for
them, should we not be merciful enough not to judge their failings
harshly!'

'My dear young lady, spare a worn-out philosopher any new
anthropologic theories. We really must push on a little faster, if
we intend to reach Ostia to-night.'

But, for some reason or other, Raphael sneered no more for a full
half-hour.

Long, however, ere they reached Ostia, the night had fallen; and
their situation began to be more than questionably safe. Now and
then a wolf, slinking across the road towards his ghastly feast,
glided like a lank ghost out of the darkness, and into it again,
answering Bran's growl by a gleam of his white teeth. Then the
voices of some marauding party rang coarse and loud through the
still night, and made them hesitate and stop a while. And at last,
worst of all, the measured tramp of an imperial column began to roll
like distant thunder along the plain below. They were advancing
upon Ostia! What if they arrived there before the routed army could
rally, and defend themselves long enough to re-embark! .... What
if--a thousand ugly possibilities began to crowd up.

'Suppose we found the gates of Ostia shut, and the Imperialists
bivouacked outside?' said Raphael half to himself.

'God would protect His own,' answered the girl; and Raphael had no
heart to rob her of her hope, though he looked upon their chances of
escape as growing smaller and smaller every moment. The poor girl
was weary; the mule weary also; and as they crawled along, at a pace
which made it certain that the fast passing column would be at Ostia
an hour before them, to join the vanguard of the pursuers, and aid
them in investing the town, she had to lean again and again on
Raphael's arm. Her shoes, unfitted for so rough a journey, bad been
long since torn off, and her tender feet were marking every step
with blood. Raphael knew it by her faltering gait; and remarked,
too, that neither sigh nor murmur passed her lips. But as for
helping her, he could not; and began to curse the fancy which had
led to eschew even sandals as unworthy the self-dependence of a
Cynic.

And so they crawled along, while Raphael and the Prefect, each
guessing the terrible thoughts of the other, were thankful for the
darkness which hid their despairing countenances from the young
girl; she, on the other hand, chatting cheerfully, almost
laughingly, to her silent father.