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IMPRESSIONS—INDEPENDENCE.

IMPRESSIONS.

There is a great deal in the first impression.
2717 Congreve: The Way of the World. Act iv. Sc. 1.

IMPROBABILITY.

If this were played upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction.

2718

Shakespeare: Twelfth Night. Act iii. Sc. 4.

IMPROVEMENT.

Improvement is nature.

2719 Leigh Hunt: Table Talk. Imaginary Conversations of Pope and Swift.

IMPROVIDENCE.

Buy what thou hast no need of, and ere long thou shalt sell thy necessaries.

2720 Benjamin Franklin: Poor Richard's Almanac. INCLINATION.

Men's thoughts are much according to their inclination. 2721 Bacon: Essays. Of Custom and Education. All men that are ruined are ruined on the side of their natural propensities.

2722

Burke: Letters on a Regicide Peace. Letter i.

INCOMPLETENESS.

The unfinished is nothing.

2723

Amiel: Journal, Aug. 13, 1865. (Mrs. Humphrey
Ward, Translator.)

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Colonies do not cease to be colonies because they are independent.

2724 Disraeli (Earl of Beaconsfield): Speech, House of Commons, Feb. 5, 1863. Address to Her Majesty on the Lords Commissioners' Speech.

The king is the least independent man in his dominions; the beggar the most so.

2725

J. C. and A. W. Hare: Guesses at Truth. We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

2726 Thomas Jefferson: Declaration of Independence. The famous Fourth of July, and that Declaration which rendered reconcilement impossible.

2727

Thackeray: The Virginians. Ch. 89. Independence now and independence forever.

2728

Daniel Webster: Eulogy, Aug. 2, 1826. On
Adams and Jefferson.

INDEPENDENCE DAY.

The second day of July, 1776, will be the most memorable epocha in the history of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival. It ought to be commemorated, as the day of deliverance, by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires, and illuminations, from one end of this continent to the other, from this time forward forevermore.

2729 John Adams: Letter, July 3, 1776. To Mrs. Adams.

INDEXES.

I certainly think that the best book in the world would owe the most to a good index, and the worst book, if it had but a single good thought in it, might be kept alive by it. Horace Binney: Letter, April 8, 1868. To S. Austin Allibone.

2730

I have come to regard a good book as curtailed of half its value if it has not a pretty full index. It is almost impossible without such a guide to reproduce on demand the most striking thoughts or facts the book contains, whether for citation or further consideration. 2731

Horace Binney: Letter, Feb. 20, 1866.
To S. Austin Allibone.

Most indexes are greatly impaired in usefulness by the modesty of the compiler. When a writer has made as many as two entries of one paragraph he generally thinks it a great stretch, and fears he will be accused of something like boasting if he puts it again under another and another heading. But it is a more profitable form of modesty to forget himself altogether, and consider only the reader's advantage, and how to make the matter at his disposal most available.

2732 R. H. Busk: Notes and Queries. Seventh series, I. May 1, 1886. Indexing Monumental Inscriptions. Multitudes of desired items lie buried under one's hand, lost and useless, because the mind that indexed them thought of them under one category, and the mind that wants to unearth them searches for them under another category. But the searcher, occupied with his subject, ought to find his reference ready to hand, and not have to rack his brain over possible relations of it. It is the index-maker who should make it his business to do that, and hold the subject ready for all the various classes who are likely to want it. Complete indexing involves repetition. Indexing.. is far from the easy task it is too often credited with being, and great is the havoc habitually resulting from delivering it over to inferior hands. It requires a great deal of information and a great deal of judgment, and will be complete and useful exactly in propor

tion as the compiler is acquainted with the subject he is handling, and is well informed as to the needs of the various classes who will use the book he is indexing.

2733 R. H. Busk: Notes and Queries. Seventh series, I. May 1, 1886. Indexing Monumental Inscriptions. Time is of more value than type, and the wear and tear of the temper than an extra page of index. 2734 R. H. Busk: Notes and Queries.

Seventh series, I.

May 1, 1886. Indexing Monumental Inscriptions.

So essential did I consider an index to be to every book, that I proposed to bring a bill into Parliament to deprive an author who publishes a book without an index of the privilege of copyright, and, moreover, to subject him for his offence to a pecuniary penalty.

2735

Lord Campbell: Lives of the Chief Justices of
England. Vol. iii. Preface.

An index is a necessary implement, and no impediment, of a book, except in the same sense wherein the carriages of an army are termed impediments. Without this a large author is but a labyrinth without a clew to direct the reader therein. I confess there is a lazy kind of learning, which is only indical; where scholars (like adders which only pite the horse heels) nibble but at the tables, which are called calces librorum, neglecting the body of the book. But, though the idle deserve no crutches (let not a staff be used by them, but on them), pity it is the weary should be denied the benefit thereof, and industrious scholars prohibited the accommodation of an index, most used by those who most pretend to contemn it.

2736 Thomas Fuller: History of the Worthies of England. Norfolk. Writers. Alan of Llyn.

The value of an accurate index is well known to those who have frequent occasion to consult voluminous works in any science; and to construct a good one requires great patience, labor, and skill.

2737

Joseph Story: Danes' Digest of American Law. (North American Review, July, 1826.)

It is reckoned that there is not at this present a sufficient quantity of new matter left in nature to furnish and adorn any one particular subject to the extent of a volume. What remains, therefore, but that our last recourse must be had to large indexes and little compendiums?

2738 Swift: A Tale of a Tub. A Digression in Praise of Digressions.

The most accomplished way of using books at present is twofold; either, first, to serve them as some men do lords, learn their titles exactly, and then brag of their acquaintance; or, secondly, which is indeed the choicer, the profounder and

politer method, to get a thorough insight into the index, by
which the whole book is governed and turned, like fishes by
the tail. For to enter the palace of learning at the great
gate requires an expense of time and forms, therefore men of
much haste and little ceremony are content to get in by the
back door. . . . For this great blessing we are wholly indebted
to systems and abstracts, in which the modern fathers of
learning, like prudent usurers, spent their sweat for the ease
of us their children. For labor is the seed of idleness, and it
is the peculiar happiness of our noble age to gather the fruit.
2739 Swift: A Tale of a Tub. A Digression in Praise
of Digressions.

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It is the Indian summer.

The rising sun blazes through
the misty air like a conflagration. A yellowish, smoky haze
fills the atmosphere,

And a filmy mist

Lies like a silver lining on the sky.

The wind is soft and low. It wafts to us the odor of
forest leaves, that hang wilted on the dripping branches,
or drop into the stream. Their gorgeous tints are gone,
as if the autumnal rains had washed them out. Orange,
yellow, and scarlet, all are changed to one melancholy russet
hue. The birds, too, have taken wing, and have left their
roofless dwellings. Not the whistle of a robin, not the twitter
of an eavesdropping swallow, not the carol of one sweet,
familiar voice. All gone. Only the dismal cawing of a crow,
as he sits and curses that the harvest is over; or the chit-chat
of an idle squirrel, the noisy denizen of a hollow tree, the
mendicant friar of a large parish, the absolute monarch of a
dozen acorns.

2740 Longfellow: Prose Works. Appendix II. The
Blank-Book of a Country Schoolmaster. XVII.
Autumn.

INDIVIDUALITY.

God gave every man individuality of constitution, and a
chance for achieving individuality of character.
He puts
special instruments into every man's hands by which to make
himself and achieve his mission.

2741 J. G. Holland: Plain Talks on Familiar Subjects.
I. Self-Help.

Individuality is everywhere to be spared and respected as
the root of everything good.

2742 Richter: Tytan. Cycle 111. (Brooks, Translator.)
Every subject's duty is the king's; but every subject's soul
is bis own.

2743

Shakespeare: King Henry V. Act iv. Sc. 1.

The greatness of an artist or a writer does not depend on what he has in common with other artists and writers, but on what he has peculiar to himself.

2744 Alexander Smith: Dreamthorp. On the Importance of a Man to Himself.

INDOLENCE.

Never suffer youth to be an excuse for inadequacy, nor age and fame to be an excuse for indolence.

2745

B. R. Haydon: Table Talk.

B. R. Haydon: Table Talk.

Nothing is difficult; it is only we who are indolent.
2746
No truly Christian man can be truly an indolent man.
Timothy Titcomb (J. G. Holland): Gold-Foil.
XV. Indolence and Industry.

2747

INDULGENCE.

They fool me to the top of my bent.

2748

Shakespeare: Hamlet. Act iii. Sc. 2.

INDUSTRY -see Debt, Labor, Slothfulness.

In the ordinary business of life, industry can do anything which genius can do, and very many things which it cannot. 2749 Henry Ward Beecher: Proverbs from Plymouth

Pulpit.

At the workingman's house, hunger looks in but dares not enter.

Benjamin Franklin: Poor Richard's Almanac.

2750
Industry need not wish.

2751 Benjamin Franklin: Poor Richard's Almanac. Sloth makes all things difficult, but industry all things easy. 2752 Benjamin Franklin: Poor Richard's Almanac. Wherever a ship ploughs the sea, or a plough furrows the field; wherever a mine yields its treasure; wherever a ship or a railroad train carries freight to market; wherever the smoke of the furnace rises, or the clang of the loom resounds; even in the lonely garret where the seamstress plies her busy needle, - there is industry.

2753 Garfield: Works of James Abram Garfield. Speech, House of Representatives, April 1, 1870. The Tariff Bill.

The great end of all human industry, is the attainment of happiness.

2754 Hume Essays. XV. The Stoic; or, The Man of Action and Virtue.

Few things are impossible to diligence and skill.

Johnson: Rasselas. Ch. 12.

2755
Genius begins great works, labor alone finishes them.
2756 Joubert: Pensées. No. 335. (Atwell, Translator.)

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