Peter Pan / James M. Barrie

Title: Peter Pan (Peter and Wendy)

Author: James M. Barrie 

Subjects: Fiction; Children

It is a story of a young boy Peter Pan, who can fly and never grows up, spends his never-ending childhood having adventures on the mythical island of Neverland and leader of the lost boys. The story is full of fairies, pirates, mermaids, Native Americans, and occasionally ordinary children. Peter Pan has become symbol of escapism. 

Robert Louis Stevenson / James M. Barrie

Some men of letters, not necessarily the greatest, have an indescribable charm to which we give our hearts. Thackeray is the young man's first love. Of living authors, none perhaps bewitches the reader more than Mr. Stevenson, who plays upon words as if they were a musical instrument. To follow the music is less difficult than to place the musician. A friend of mine, who, like Mr. Grant Allen, reviews 365 books a year, and 366 in leap years, recently arranged the novelists of to-day in order of merit. Meredith, of course, he wrote first, and then there was a fall to Hardy. "Haggard," he explained, "I dropped from the Eiffel Tower; but what can I do with Stevenson? I can't put him before 'Lorna Doone.'" So Mr. Stevenson puzzles the critics, fascinating them until they are willing to judge him by the great work he is to write by and by when the little books are finished. Over "Treasure Island" I let my fire die in winter without knowing that I was freezing. But the creator of Alan Breck has now published nearly twenty volumes. It is so much easier to finish the little works than to begin the great one, for which we are all taking notes.

Neither Dorking Nor The Abbey / James M. Barrie

A Tribute to George Meredith, Victorian Era English Poet and Novelist, by J. M. Barrie

In England recently there died a great man—the greatest of his day. Immediately there arose much vain contention as to whether or no his dust should be given resting place among that of his peers in Westminster Abbey. Finally came the decision that Westminster was not to be so honored; and the urn containing all of him that had outlived the fire was placed in the sunny graveyard of Dorking village. Looking down toward it from the long level summit of Box Hill—his hill,—with the sunlight glinting from its marbles and along the silver Mole that winds threadlike beside it, the little cemetery seems almost a living cheerful thing in the dark green of the surrounding landscape. Surely here, if anywhere, was appropriate resting-place for this great lover of life and joy.

Courage / James M. Barrie

You have had many rectors here in St. Andrews who will continue in bloom long after the lowly ones such as I am are dead and rotten and forgotten. They are the roses in December; you remember someone said that God gave us memory so that we might have roses in December. But I do not envy the great ones. In my experience--and you may find in the end it is yours also--the people I have cared for most and who have seemed most worth caring for--my December roses--have been very simple folk. Yet I wish that for this hour I could swell into someone of importance, so as to do you credit. I suppose you had a melting for me because I was hewn out of one of your own quarries, walked similar academic groves, and have trudged the road on which you will soon set forth. I would that I could put into your hands a staff for that somewhat bloody march, for though there is much about myself that I conceal from other people, to help you I would expose every cranny of my mind.

Charles Frohman: Manager and Man / James M. Barrie

The man who never broke his word. There was a great deal more to him, but every one in any land who has had dealings with Charles Frohman will sign that.

I would rather say a word of the qualities that to his friends were his great adornment than about his colossal enterprises or the energy with which he heaved them into being; his energy that was like a force of nature, so that if he had ever "retired" from the work he loved (a thing incredible) companies might have been formed, in the land so skilful at turning energy to practical account, for exploiting the vitality of this Niagara of a man. They could have lit a city with it.

The Inconsiderate Waiter / James M. Barrie

Frequently I have to ask myself in the street for the name of the man I bowed to just now, and then, before I can answer, the wind of the first corner blows him from my memory. I have a theory, however, that those puzzling faces, which pass before I can see who cut the coat, all belong to club waiters.

Until William forced his affairs upon me that was all I did know of the private life of waiters, though I have been in the club for twenty years. I was even unaware whether they slept downstairs or had their own homes; nor had I the interest to inquire of other members, nor they the knowledge to inform me. I hold that this sort of people should be fed and clothed and given airing and wives and children, and I subscribe yearly, I believe for these purposes; but to come into closer relation with waiters is bad form; they are club fittings, and William should have kept his distress to himself, or taken it away and patched it up like a rent in one of the chairs. His inconsiderateness has been a pair of spectacles to me for months.

The Courting of T'Nowhead's Bell / James M. Barrie

For two years it had been notorious in the square that Sam'l Dickie was thinking of courting T'nowhead's Bell, and that if Little Sanders Elshioner (which is the Thrums pronunciation of Alexander Alexander) went in for her, he might prove a formidable rival. Sam'l was a weaver in the tenements, and Sanders a coal-carter, whose trade-mark was a bell on his horse's neck that told when coal was coming. Being something of a public man, Sanders had not, perhaps, so high a social position as Sam'l, but he had succeeded his father on the coal-cart, while the weaver had already tried several trades. It had always been against Sam'l, too, that once when the kirk was vacant he had advised the selection of the third minister who preached for it on the ground that it became expensive to pay a large number of candidates. The scandal of the thing was hushed up, out of respect for his father, who was a God-fearing man, but Sam'l was known by it in Lang Tammas's circle.

On Running After A Hat / James M. Barrie

Some don't run. They pretend to smile when they see their hat borne along on the breeze, and glance at the laughing faces around in a way implying, "Yes, it is funny, and I enjoy the joke, although the hat is mine." Nobody believes you, but if this does you good, you should do it. You don't attempt to catch your hat as it were on the wing. You walk after it, smiling, as if you liked the joke the more you think of it, and confident that the hat will come to rest presently. You are not the sort of man to make a fuss over a hat. You won't give the hat the satisfaction of thinking that it can annoy you. Strange though it may seem, there are idiots who will join you in pursuit of the hat. One will hook it with a stick, and almost get it, only not quite.