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Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street is a novella by the American novelist Herman Melville (1819–1891).

As the greatest lessons of Nature through the universe are perhaps the lessons of variety and freedom, the same present the greatest lessons also in New World politics and progress.

A Plea for Captain John Brown is an essay by Henry David Thoreau. It is based on a speech Thoreau first delivered to an audience at Concord, Massachusetts on October 30, 1859, two weeks after John Brown’s raid on Harper’s Ferry, and repeated several times before Brown’s execution onDecember 2, 1859. It was later published as a part of Echoes of Harper's Ferry in 1860.

PREFATORY NOTE.

Of the following studies in Emerson's poetry, as origi nally printed, my friends Charles Eliot Norton, William Rounseville Alger, and Charles Molloy, all veteran students of their revered friend's verse, and among the best living interpreters of his thought, wrote me in very flattering terms expressive of their enjoyment in reading them and their approval of the material as accurate and of permanent value. Hence its appearance in this pamphlet form. I have availed myself of Professor Norton's judgment in correcting one or two points in which I was in error. The " Clews " are not intended to be read independently of the poems, but as gloss and commentary for one who has the poems in hand.

W. S. K. BELMONT, MASS., May i, 1903.

"Paradise is under the shadow of swords."
Mahomet

Ruby wine is drunk by knaves,
Sugar spends to fatten slaves,
Rose and vine-leaf deck buffoons;
Thunderclouds are Jove's festoons,
Drooping oft in wreaths of dread Lightning-knotted round his head;
The hero is not fed on sweets,
Daily his own heart he eats;
Chambers of the great are jails,
And head-winds right for royal sails.

"Rappaccini's Daughter" is a short story written by Nathaniel Hawthorne in 1844 and collected in Mosses from an Old Manse that concerns a medical researcher in medieval Padua.

There is no great and no small
To the Soul that maketh all:
And where it cometh, all things are;
And it cometh everywhere.

I am owner of the sphere,
Of the seven stars and the solar year,
Of Caesar's hand, and Plato's brain,
Of Lord Christ's heart, and Shakspeare's strain.

"Nathaniel Hawthorne (born Nathaniel Hathorne; July 4, 1804 – May 19, 1864) was a 19th century American novelist and short story writer. He is seen as a key figure in the development of American literature for his tales of the nation's colonial history.

The pathos of death is this, that when the days of one's life are ended, those days that were so crowded with business and felt so heavy in their passing, what remains of one in memory should usually be so slight a thing. The phantom of an attitude, the echo of a certain mode of thought, a few pages of print, some invention, or some victory we gained in a brief critical hour, are all that can survive the best of us. It is as if the whole of a man's significance had now shrunk into the phantom of an attitude, into a mere musical note or phrase suggestive of his singularity — happy are those whose singularity gives a note so clear as to be victorious over the inevitable pity of such a diminution and abridgement.

"The Scarlet Letter published in 1850, is a Gothic American romance novel written by Nathaniel Hawthorne; generally considered to be his masterpiece. Set in Puritan New England (specifically Boston) in the seventeenth century, it tells the story of Hester Prynne, who gives birth after committing adultery, refuses to name the father, and struggles to create a new life of repentance and dignity. Throughout, Hawthorne explores the issues of grace, legalism, and guilt.