Across the Plains

Across the Plains – Robert Louis Stevenson

The successor in our day to both Jules Verne and Edward Bellamy is H. G. Wells, and his book, “The World Set Free,” embodies more of his creed than anything heretofore published. The goal of Mr. Wells’ thinking is the end of war and the realization upon earth of a real “parliament of the world.” This outcome is to be reached, not as in Bellamy’s scheme by peaceful evolution, but only after the present social order has been rent asunder by the release of certain elemental physical forces to be revealed to man through processes similar to those that have led to the great discoveries and inventions of the more recent past. The only way by which war could be finally abolished, according to Mr. Wells, was through the demonstration of overwhelming destructiveness of these new physical agencies under partial human control. The phrase “atomic energy” is much used by Mr. Wells in describing this tremendous power that brings about the practical disintegration of the physical world as we know it today, and he prepares the reader for his disclosures concerning this explosive force by recalling the discoveries of radio-activity and the work of Marconi and their applications in our own industrial life. In this his method closely follows that of Jules Verne. On the side of social and political construction Mr. Wells is possibly less convincing, but considering the fact that he is compelled to presuppose a situation far removed from anything that this generation can easily imagine, this is not strange.

Across the Plains

Across the Plains

Format: Paperback.

Across the Plains.

ISBN: 9783849676391.

Available at amazon.com and other venues.

 

More information on Across the Plains (from Wikipedia):

Across the Plains (1892) is the middle section of Robert Louis Stevenson’s three-part travel memoir which began with The Amateur Emigrant and ended with The Silverado Squatters.

The book contains 12 chapters, each a story or essay unto itself. The title chapter is the longest, and is divided into 7 subsections. It describes Stevenson’s arrival at New York as an immigrant, along with hundreds of other Europeans, and his train journey from New York to San Francisco in an immigrant train. Stevenson describes the train as having three sections: one for women and children, one for men, and one for Chinese. He notes that while the Europeans looked down on the Chinese for being dirty, in fact the Chinese carriages were the freshest and their passengers the cleanest.

Contents

1: Across The Plains (1.Leaves from the Notebook of an Emigrant Between New York and San Francisco; 2.The Emigrant Train; 3.The Plains of Nebraska; 4.The Desert of Wyoming; 5.Fellow-Passengers; 6.Despised Races 7.To the Golden Gates). (A travel description of Stevenson’s railway journey across the USA).
2: The Old Pacific Capital. (A reminiscence on Monterey in California).
3: Fontainebleau. (A discourse on village communities of painters, such as those found at Fontainebleau)
4: Epilogue to “An Inland Voyage”. (Stevenson is arrested by a French village mayor for not having a licence to sing).
5: Random Memories. I – The coast of Fife. (A discourse on events and people conjured up by Stevenon’s memories of the coastal areas of Fife that he visited as a child).
6: Random Memories. II – The education of an engineer. (Stevenson describes the time he went diving at Anstruther in Scotland, in a rubber suit with a great brass helmet).
7: The Lantern-bearers. (Stevenson’s memories of running about at night with his friends, each with a lantern hidden under his coat, which evolves into a discussion of the causes of joy).
8: A Chapter on Dreams. (Discusses dreams, and an author known to Stevenson whose work was based on his dreams. This author turns out to be Stevenson himself, and mentions how Olalla and Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde were both based on Stevenson’s own dreams).
9: Beggars. (A description of two beggars Stevenson had met, which evolves into a discourse on beggary in general, and charity, and concludes with recommending taxes as the best means of redistribution of wealth).
10: Letter to a Young Gentleman who proposes to embrace a career in art.
11: Pulvis et Umbra.
12: A Christmas Sermon.

 

(The text of the last section was taken from a Wikipedia entry and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.)

 

Publisher’s Note: This book is printed and distributed by Createspace a DBA of On-Demand Publishing LLC and is typically not available anywhere else than in stores owned and operated by Amazon or Createspace.

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