Baddeck and That Sort of Thing
(Charles Dudley Warner)
Legend has it that Alexander Graham Bell was inspired by this travelogue of a journey through the Canadian Maritime provinces to establish his estate there. It may be what this delightful little book is best remembered for, but it has much more to recommend it.
Being a Boy
(Charles Dudley Warner)
One of the best things in the world to be is a boy; it requires no experience, though it needs some practice to be a good one. The disadvantage of the position is that it does not last long enough; it is soon over; just as you get used to being a boy, you have to be something else, with a good deal more work to do and not half so much fun.
In the Wilderness
(Charles Dudley Warner)
Hilariously snide and sarcastic, these essays of an American Victorian gentleman's adventures in the great outdoors are strikingly contemporary; for all that they were first published in 1878.
Warner relates his encounters with such denizens of the wildness as the bear (who "minds his own business more thoroughly than any person I know") and the deer ("who would like to be friendly with men, but whose winning face and gentle ways are no protection from the savageness of man"), shares his feelings on the "unromantic" Adirondacks ("I suppose the red Indian lived here in his usual discomfort"), and regales us with the kind of misadventures that "some people call pleasure."
On Horseback
(Charles Dudley Warner)
The Professor and the Friend of Humanity were about starting on a journey, across country southward, through regions about which the people of Abingdon could give little useful information. If the travelers had known the capacities and resources of the country, they would not have started without a supply train, or the establishment of bases of provisions in advance.
The People for Whom Shakespeare Wrote
(Charles Dudley Warner)
The question is often asked, but I consider it an idle one, whether Shakespeare was appreciated in his own day as he is now. That the age, was unable to separate him from itself, and see his great stature, is probable; that it enjoyed him with a sympathy to which we are strangers there is no doubt.
