Artemus Ward, probably America’s greatest humorist before Mark Twain, reports on his little Indiana town’s celebration of the telegraph cable that brought news across the Atlantic instantaneously for the first time.
Charles H. Caffin argues that beauty is as essential as utility in civilization, and the placement of utility above beauty is a relapse into something worse than barbarism.
In 1850 there was no reciprocal copyright agreement between the United States and the United Kingdom. After trying to play fair, Henry G. Bohn gave up and published a pirated edition of Washington Irving’s Mahomet and His Successors. Here he explains what drove him to it.
Chesterton the journalist, writing shortly after the United States declared war on Germany, points out what a remarkable change in public opinion had to be accomplished for America to enter the Great War.
A French traveler’s description of the state of black residents of the United States, both free and slave, in the years just after the American Revolution.