American Notes for General Circulation, Volume 1Chapman and Hall, 1842 - 306 pages |
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Common terms and phrases
Almack's America American Eagle amusements appearance Barrel-organs beautiful better blind Boston boys building cabin called carpet-bag cell chamber character Charles Dickens cheerful colours comfort Connecticut River course creature dark deck dinner door dress England eyes face favourable feel fingers friends gallery gentleman girl going hand handsome head hour houses imitate Institution jail kind labour ladies laughing Laura Laura Bridgman legs light lives look looking-glass Lowell Lowell Offering manual alphabet ment mind morning never night oakum officers party passage passed passengers persons Philadelphia pleasant portmanteaus pretty prison Queen Victoria racter railroad remember round seemed ship side sight solitary South Boston spirit spittoon stairs state-room station steamboat street strong thing thought tion town Transcendentalists turned walk wall Washington whole window words young
Popular passages
Page 73 - There she was, before me ; built up, as it were, in a marble cell, impervious to any ray of light, or particle of sound ; with her poor white hand peeping through a chink in the wall, beckoning to some good man for help, that an Immortal soul might be awakened.
Page 302 - He looked somewhat worn and anxious, and well he might : being at war with everybody — but the expression of his face was mild and pleasant, and his manner was remarkably unaffected, gentlemanly, and agreeable. I thought that in his whole carriage and demeanour, he became his station singularly well.
Page 151 - THE LOCOMOTIVE." On it whirls headlong, dives through the woods again, emerges in the light, clatters over frail arches, rumbles upon the heavy ground, shoots beneath a wooden bridge which intercepts the light for a second like a wink, suddenly awakens all the slumbering echoes in the main street of a large town, and dashes on haphazard, pell-mell, neck-or-nothing, down the middle of the road.
Page 159 - Secondly, nearly all these young ladies subscribe to circulating libraries. Thirdly, they have got up among themselves a periodical called THE LOWELL OFFERING, "A repository of original articles, written exclusively by females actively employed in the mills...
Page 242 - Over the head and face of every prisoner who comes into this melancholy house, a black hood is drawn ; and in this dark shroud, an emblem of the curtain dropped between him and the living world, he is led to the cell from which he never again comes forth until his whole term of imprisonment has expired.
Page 277 - Being rather early, those men and boys who happened to have nothing particular to do, and were curious in foreigners, came (according to custom) round the carriage in which I sat; let down all the windows ; thrust in their heads and shoulders ; hooked themselves on conveniently, by their elbows ; and fell to comparing notes on the subject of my personal appearance, with as much indifference as if I were a stuffed figure. I never gained so much uncompromising information with reference to my own nose...
Page 34 - ... beaten down, and battered, and crushed, and leaped on by the angry sea — that thunder, lightning, hail, and rain, and wind, are all in fierce contention for the mastery — that every plank has its groan, every nail its shriek, and every drop of water in the great ocean its howling voice — is nothing. To say that all is grand, and all appalling and horrible in the last degree, is nothing. Words cannot express it. Thoughts cannot convey it. Only a dream can call it up again, in all its fury,...
Page 104 - Ye who have eyes and see not, and have ears and heai not ; ye who are as the hypocrites of sad countenances, and disfigure your faces that ye may seem unto men to fast ; learn healthy cheerfulness, and mild contentment, from the deaf, and dumb, and blind ! Self-elected saints with gloomy brows, this sightless, earless, voiceless child may teach you lessons you will do well to follow. Let that poor hand of hers lie gently on your hearts...
Page 87 - I hers, and following every movement of their fingers, as letter after letter conveys their meaning to her mind. It is in this way that she converses with her blind playmates, and nothing can more forcibly show the power of mind in forcing matter to its purpose, than a meeting between them. For if great talent and skill are necessary for two pantomimes to paint their thoughts and feelings by the movements of the body, and the expression of the countenance, how much greater the difficulty when darkness...
Page 292 - ... strife of politics so fierce and brutal, and so destructive of all self-respect in worthy men, that sensitive and delicate-minded persons shall be kept aloof, and they, and such as they, be left to battle out their selfish views unchecked. And thus this lowest of all scrambling fights goes on, and they who in other countries would, from their intelligence and station, most aspire to make the laws, do here recoil the farthest from that degradation.