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Around the World in Eighty Days by Jules Verne, is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book . IN WHICH CERTAIN INCIDENTS ARE NARRATED WHICH ARE ONLY TO BE MET WITH ON AMERICAN RAILROADS here CHAPTER XXIX. IN WHICH CERTAIN INCIDENTS ARE NARRATED WHICH ARE ONLY TO BE MET WITH ON AMERICAN RAILROADS The train pursued its course, that evening, without interruption, passing Fort Saunders, crossing Cheyne Pass, and reaching Evans Pass. The road here attained the highest elevation of the journey, eight thousand and ninety-two feet above the level of the sea. The travellers had now only to descend to the Atlantic by limitless plains, levelled by nature. A branch of the “grand trunk” led off southward to Denver, the capital of Colorado. The country round about is rich in gold and silver, and more than fifty thousand inhabitants are already settled there. Thirteen hundred and eighty-two miles had been passed over from San Francisco, in three days and three nights; four days and nights more would probably bring them to New York. Phileas Fogg was not as yet behind-hand. During the night Camp Walbach was passed on the left; Lodge Pole Creek ran parallel with the road, marking the boundary between the territories of Wyoming and Colorado. They entered Nebraska at eleven, passed near Sedgwick, and touched at Julesburg, on the southern branch of the Platte River. It was here that the Union Pacific Railroad was inaugurated on the 23rd of October, 1867, by the chief engineer, General Dodge. Two powerful locomotives, carrying nine cars of invited guests, amongst whom was Thomas C. Durant, vice-president of the road, stopped at this point; cheers were given, the Sioux and Pawnees performed an imitation Indian battle, fireworks were let off, and the first number of the was printed by a press brought on the train. Thus was celebrated the inauguration of this great railroad, a mighty instrument of progress and civilisation, thrown across the desert, and destined to link together cities and towns which do not yet exist. The whistle of the locomotive, more powerful than Amphion’s lyre, was about to bid them rise from American soil. Railway Pioneer Fort McPherson was left behind at eight in the morning, and three hundred and fifty-seven miles had yet to be traversed before reaching Omaha. The road followed the capricious windings of the southern branch of the Platte River, on its left bank. At nine the train stopped at the important town of North Platte, built between the two arms of the river, which rejoin each other around it and form a single artery, a large tributary, whose waters empty into the Missouri a little above Omaha. The one hundred and first meridian was passed. Mr. Fogg and his partners had resumed their game; no one—not even the dummy—complained of the length of the trip. Fix had begun by winning several guineas, which he seemed likely to lose; but he showed himself a not less eager whist-player than Mr. Fogg. During the morning, chance distinctly favoured that gentleman. Trumps and honours were showered upon his hands. Once, having resolved on a bold stroke, he was on the point of playing a spade, when a voice behind him said, “I should play a diamond.” Mr. Fogg, Aouda, and Fix raised their heads, and beheld Colonel Proctor. Stamp Proctor and Phileas Fogg recognised each other at once. “Ah! it’s you, is it, Englishman?” cried the colonel; “it’s you who are going to play a spade!” “And who plays it,” replied Phileas Fogg coolly, throwing down the ten of spades. “Well, it pleases me to have it diamonds,” replied Colonel Proctor, in an insolent tone. He made a movement as if to seize the card which had just been played, adding, “You don’t understand anything about whist.” “Perhaps I do, as well as another,” said Phileas Fogg, rising. “You have only to try, son of John Bull,” replied the colonel. Aouda turned pale, and her blood ran cold. She seized Mr. Fogg’s arm and gently pulled him back. Passepartout was ready to pounce upon the American, who was staring insolently at his opponent. But Fix got up, and, going to Colonel Proctor said, “You forget that it is I with whom you have to deal, sir; for it was I whom you not only insulted, but struck!” “Mr. Fix,” said Mr. Fogg, “pardon me, but this affair is mine, and mine only. The colonel has again insulted me, by insisting that I should not play a spade, and he shall give me satisfaction for it.” “When and where you will,” replied the American, “and with whatever weapon you choose.” Aouda in vain attempted to retain Mr. Fogg; as vainly did the detective endeavour to make the quarrel his. Passepartout wished to throw the colonel out of the window, but a sign from his master checked him. Phileas Fogg left the car, and the American followed him upon the platform. “Sir,” said Mr. Fogg to his adversary, “I am in a great hurry to get back to Europe, and any delay whatever will be greatly to my disadvantage.” “Well, what’s that to me?” replied Colonel Proctor. “Sir,” said Mr. Fogg, very politely, “after our meeting at San Francisco, I determined to return to America and find you as soon as I had completed the business which called me to England.” “Really!” “Will you appoint a meeting for six months hence?” “Why not ten years hence?” “I say six months,” returned Phileas Fogg; “and I shall be at the place of meeting promptly.” “All this is an evasion,” cried Stamp Proctor. “Now or never!” “Very good. You are going to New York?” “No.” “To Chicago?” “No.” “To Omaha?” “What difference is it to you? Do you know Plum Creek?” “No,” replied Mr. Fogg. “It’s the next station. The train will be there in an hour, and will stop there ten minutes. In ten minutes several revolver-shots could be exchanged.” “Very well,” said Mr. Fogg. “I will stop at Plum Creek.” “And I guess you’ll stay there too,” added the American insolently. “Who knows?” replied Mr. Fogg, returning to the car as coolly as usual. He began to reassure Aouda, telling her that blusterers were never to be feared, and begged Fix to be his second at the approaching duel, a request which the detective could not refuse. Mr. Fogg resumed the interrupted game with perfect calmness. At eleven o’clock the locomotive’s whistle announced that they were approaching Plum Creek station. Mr. Fogg rose, and, followed by Fix, went out upon the platform. Passepartout accompanied him, carrying a pair of revolvers. Aouda remained in the car, as pale as death. The door of the next car opened, and Colonel Proctor appeared on the platform, attended by a Yankee of his own stamp as his second. But just as the combatants were about to step from the train, the conductor hurried up, and shouted, “You can’t get off, gentlemen!” “Why not?” asked the colonel. “We are twenty minutes late, and we shall not stop.” “But I am going to fight a duel with this gentleman.” “I am sorry,” said the conductor; “but we shall be off at once. There’s the bell ringing now.” The train started. “I’m really very sorry, gentlemen,” said the conductor. “Under any other circumstances I should have been happy to oblige you. But, after all, as you have not had time to fight here, why not fight as we go along?” “That wouldn’t be convenient, perhaps, for this gentleman,” said the colonel, in a jeering tone. “It would be perfectly so,” replied Phileas Fogg. “Well, we are really in America,” thought Passepartout, “and the conductor is a gentleman of the first order!” So muttering, he followed his master. The two combatants, their seconds, and the conductor passed through the cars to the rear of the train. The last car was only occupied by a dozen passengers, whom the conductor politely asked if they would not be so kind as to leave it vacant for a few moments, as two gentlemen had an affair of honour to settle. The passengers granted the request with alacrity, and straightway disappeared on the platform. The car, which was some fifty feet long, was very convenient for their purpose. The adversaries might march on each other in the aisle, and fire at their ease. Never was duel more easily arranged. Mr. Fogg and Colonel Proctor, each provided with two six-barrelled revolvers, entered the car. The seconds, remaining outside, shut them in. They were to begin firing at the first whistle of the locomotive. After an interval of two minutes, what remained of the two gentlemen would be taken from the car. Nothing could be more simple. Indeed, it was all so simple that Fix and Passepartout felt their hearts beating as if they would crack. They were listening for the whistle agreed upon, when suddenly savage cries resounded in the air, accompanied by reports which certainly did not issue from the car where the duellists were. The reports continued in front and the whole length of the train. Cries of terror proceeded from the interior of the cars. Colonel Proctor and Mr. Fogg, revolvers in hand, hastily quitted their prison, and rushed forward where the noise was most clamorous. They then perceived that the train was attacked by a band of Sioux. This was not the first attempt of these daring Indians, for more than once they had waylaid trains on the road. A hundred of them had, according to their habit, jumped upon the steps without stopping the train, with the ease of a clown mounting a horse at full gallop. The Sioux were armed with guns, from which came the reports, to which the passengers, who were almost all armed, responded by revolver-shots. The Indians had first mounted the engine, and half stunned the engineer and stoker with blows from their muskets. A Sioux chief, wishing to stop the train, but not knowing how to work the regulator, had opened wide instead of closing the steam-valve, and the locomotive was plunging forward with terrific velocity. The Sioux had at the same time invaded the cars, skipping like enraged monkeys over the roofs, thrusting open the doors, and fighting hand to hand with the passengers. Penetrating the baggage-car, they pillaged it, throwing the trunks out of the train. The cries and shots were constant. The travellers defended themselves bravely; some of the cars were barricaded, and sustained a siege, like moving forts, carried along at a speed of a hundred miles an hour. Aouda behaved courageously from the first. She defended herself like a true heroine with a revolver, which she shot through the broken windows whenever a savage made his appearance. Twenty Sioux had fallen mortally wounded to the ground, and the wheels crushed those who fell upon the rails as if they had been worms. Several passengers, shot or stunned, lay on the seats. It was necessary to put an end to the struggle, which had lasted for ten minutes, and which would result in the triumph of the Sioux if the train was not stopped. Fort Kearney station, where there was a garrison, was only two miles distant; but, that once passed, the Sioux would be masters of the train between Fort Kearney and the station beyond. The conductor was fighting beside Mr. Fogg, when he was shot and fell. At the same moment he cried, “Unless the train is stopped in five minutes, we are lost!” “It shall be stopped,” said Phileas Fogg, preparing to rush from the car. “Stay, monsieur,” cried Passepartout; “I will go.” Mr. Fogg had not time to stop the brave fellow, who, opening a door unperceived by the Indians, succeeded in slipping under the car; and while the struggle continued and the balls whizzed across each other over his head, he made use of his old acrobatic experience, and with amazing agility worked his way under the cars, holding on to the chains, aiding himself by the brakes and edges of the sashes, creeping from one car to another with marvellous skill, and thus gaining the forward end of the train. There, suspended by one hand between the baggage-car and the tender, with the other he loosened the safety chains; but, owing to the traction, he would never have succeeded in unscrewing the yoking-bar, had not a violent concussion jolted this bar out. The train, now detached from the engine, remained a little behind, whilst the locomotive rushed forward with increased speed. Carried on by the force already acquired, the train still moved for several minutes; but the brakes were worked and at last they stopped, less than a hundred feet from Kearney station. The soldiers of the fort, attracted by the shots, hurried up; the Sioux had not expected them, and decamped in a body before the train entirely stopped. But when the passengers counted each other on the station platform several were found missing; among others the courageous Frenchman, whose devotion had just saved them. About HackerNoon Book Series: We bring you the most important technical, scientific, and insightful public domain books. This book is part of the public domain. Jules Verne (1994). Around the World in Eighty Days. Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved October 2022 https://www.gutenberg.org/files/103/103-h/103-h.htm This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at , located at . www.gutenberg.org https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html

IN WHICH CERTAIN INCIDENTS ARE NARRATED WHICH ARE ONLY TO BE MET WITH ON AMERICAN RAILROADS

The Murder on the Links by Agatha Christie, is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book here . Poirot Elucidates Certain Points XII. Poirot Elucidates Certain Points “Why did you measure that overcoat?” I asked, with some curiosity, as we walked down the hot white road at a leisurely pace. “Parbleu! to see how long it was,” replied my friend imperturbably. I was vexed. Poirot’s incurable habit of making a mystery out of nothing never failed to irritate me. I relapsed into silence, and followed a train of thought of my own. Although I had not noticed them specially at the time, certain words Mrs. Renauld had addressed to her son now recurred to me, fraught with a new significance. “So you did not sail?” she had said, and then had added: “After all, it does not matter—now.” What had she meant by that? The words were enigmatical—significant. Was it possible that she knew more than we supposed? She had denied all knowledge of the mysterious mission with which her husband was to have entrusted his son. But was she really less ignorant than she pretended? Could she enlighten us if she chose, and was her silence part of a carefully thought out and preconceived plan? The more I thought about it, the more I was convinced that I was right. Mrs. Renauld knew more than she chose to tell. In her surprise at seeing her son, she had momentarily betrayed herself. I felt convinced that she knew, if not the assassins, at least the motive for the assassination. But some very powerful considerations must keep her silent. “You think profoundly, my friend,” remarked Poirot, breaking in upon my reflections. “What is it that intrigues you so?” I told him, sure of my ground, though feeling expectant that he would ridicule my suspicions. But to my surprise he nodded thoughtfully. “You are quite right, Hastings. From the beginning I have been sure that she was keeping something back. At first I suspected her, if not of inspiring, at least of conniving at the crime.” “You suspected her?” I cried. “But certainly! She benefits enormously—in fact, by this new will, she is the only person to benefit. So, from the start, she was singled out for attention. You may have noticed that I took an early opportunity of examining her wrists. I wished to see whether there was any possibility that she had gagged and bound herself. Eh bien, I saw at once that there was no fake, the cords had actually been drawn so tight as to cut into the flesh. That ruled out the possibility of her having committed the crime single-handed. But it was still possible for her to have connived at it, or to have been the instigator with an accomplice. Moreover, the story, as she told it, was singularly familiar to me—the masked men that she could not recognize, the mention of ‘the secret’—I had heard, or read, all these things before. Another little detail confirmed my belief that she was not speaking the truth. The wrist watch, Hastings, the wrist watch!” Again that wrist watch! Poirot was eyeing me curiously. “You see, mon ami? You comprehend?” “No,” I replied with some ill humour. “I neither see nor comprehend. You make all these confounded mysteries, and it’s useless asking you to explain. You always like keeping everything up your sleeve to the last minute.” “Do not enrage yourself, my friend,” said Poirot with a smile. “I will explain if you wish. But not a word to Giraud, c’est entendu? He treats me as an old one of no importance! We shall see! In common fairness I gave him a hint. If he does not choose to act upon it, that is his own look out.” I assured Poirot that he could rely upon my discretion. “C’est bien! Let us then employ our little grey cells. Tell me, my friend, at what time, according to you, did the tragedy take place?” “Why, at two o’clock or thereabouts,” I said, astonished. “You remember, Mrs. Renauld told us that she heard the clock strike while the men were in the room.” “Exactly, and on the strength of that, you, the examining magistrate, Bex, and every one else, accept the time without further question. But I, Hercule Poirot, say that Madame Renauld lied. The crime took place at least two hours earlier.” “But the doctors—” “They declared, after examination of the body, that death had taken place between ten and seven hours previously. Mon ami, for some reason, it was imperative that the crime should seem to have taken place later than it actually did. You have read of a smashed watch or clock recording the exact hour of a crime? So that the time should not rest on Mrs. Renauld’s testimony alone, some one moved on the hands of that wrist watch to two o’clock, and then dashed it violently to the ground. But, as is often the case, they defeated their own object. The glass was smashed, but the mechanism of the watch was uninjured. It was a most disastrous manoeuvre on their part, for it at once drew my attention to two points—first, that Madame Renauld was lying: secondly, that there must be some vital reason for the postponement of the time.” “But what reason could there be?” “Ah, that is the question! There we have the whole mystery. As yet, I cannot explain it. There is only one idea that presents itself to me as having a possible connection.” “And that is?” “The last train left Merlinville at seventeen minutes past twelve.” I followed it out slowly. “So that, the crime apparently taking place some two hours later, any one leaving by that train would have an unimpeachable alibi!” “Perfect, Hastings! You have it!” I sprang up. “But we must inquire at the station. Surely they cannot have failed to notice two foreigners who left by that train! We must go there at once!” “You think so, Hastings?” “Of course. Let us go there now.” Poirot restrained my ardour with a light touch upon the arm. “Go by all means if you wish, mon ami—but if you go, I should not ask for particulars of two foreigners.” I stared, and he said rather impatiently: “Là, là, you do not believe all that rigmarole, do you? The masked men and all the rest of cette histoire-là!” His words took me so much aback that I hardly knew how to respond. He went on serenely: “You heard me say to Giraud, did you not, that all the details of this crime were familiar to me? Eh bien, that presupposes one of two things, either the brain that planned the first crime also planned this one, or else an account read of a cause célèbre unconsciously remained in our assassin’s memory and prompted the details. I shall be able to pronounce definitely on that after—” he broke off. I was revolving sundry matters in my mind. “But Mr. Renauld’s letter? It distinctly mentions a secret and Santiago?” “Undoubtedly there was a secret in M. Renauld’s life—there can be no doubt of that. On the other hand, the word Santiago, to my mind, is a red herring, dragged continually across the track to put us off the scent. It is possible that it was used in the same way on M. Renauld, to keep him from directing his suspicions into a quarter nearer at hand. Oh, be assured, Hastings, the danger that threatened him was not in Santiago, it was near at hand, in France.” He spoke so gravely, and with such assurance, that I could not fail to be convinced. But I essayed one final objection: “And the match and cigarette end found near the body? What of them.” A light of pure enjoyment lit up Poirot’s face. “Planted! Deliberately planted there for Giraud or one of his tribe to find! Ah, he is smart, Giraud, he can do his tricks! So can a good retriever dog. He comes in so pleased with himself. For hours he has crawled on his stomach. ‘See what I have found,’ he says. And then again to me: ‘What do you see here?’ Me, I answer, with profound and deep truth, ‘Nothing.’ And Giraud, the great Giraud, he laughs, he thinks to himself, ‘Oh, that he is imbecile, this old one!’ But we shall see. …” But my mind had reverted to the main facts. “Then all this story of the masked men—?” “Is false.” “What really happened?” Poirot shrugged his shoulders. “One person could tell us—Madame Renauld. But she will not speak. Threats and entreaties would not move her. A remarkable woman that, Hastings. I recognized as soon as I saw her that I had to deal with a woman of unusual character. At first, as I told you, I was inclined to suspect her of being concerned in the crime. Afterwards I altered my opinion.” “What made you do that?” “Her spontaneous and genuine grief at the sight of her husband’s body. I could swear that the agony in that cry of hers was genuine.” “Yes,” I said thoughtfully, “one cannot mistake these things.” “I beg your pardon, my friend—one can always be mistaken. Regard a great actress, does not her acting of grief carry you away and impress you with its reality? No, however strong my own impression and belief, I needed other evidence before I allowed myself to be satisfied. The great criminal can be a great actor. I base my certainty in this case, not upon my own impression, but upon the undeniable fact that Mrs. Renauld actually fainted. I turned up her eyelids and felt her pulse. There was no deception—the swoon was genuine. Therefore I was satisfied that her anguish was real and not assumed. Besides, a small additional point not without interest, it was unnecessary for Mrs. Renauld to exhibit unrestrained grief. She had had one paroxysm on learning of her husband’s death, and there would be no need for her to simulate another such a violent one on beholding his body. No, Mrs. Renauld was not her husband’s murderess. But why has she lied? She lied about the wrist watch, she lied about the masked men—she lied about a third thing. Tell me, Hastings, what is your explanation of the open door?” “Well,” I said, rather embarrassed, “I suppose it was an oversight. They forgot to shut it.” Poirot shook his head, and sighed. “That is the explanation of Giraud. It does not satisfy me. There is a meaning behind that open door which for a moment I cannot fathom.” “I have an idea,” I cried suddenly. “A la bonne heure! Let us hear it.” “Listen. We are agreed that Mrs. Renauld’s story is a fabrication. Is it not possible, then, that Mr. Renauld left the house to keep an appointment—possibly with the murderer—leaving the front door open for his return. But he did not return, and the next morning he is found, stabbed in the back.” “An admirable theory, Hastings, but for two facts which you have characteristically overlooked. In the first place, who gagged and bound Madame Renauld? And why on earth should they return to the house to do so? In the second place, no man on earth would go out to keep an appointment wearing his underclothes and an overcoat. There are circumstances in which a man might wear pajamas and an overcoat—but the other, never!” “True,” I said, rather crest-fallen. “No,” continued Poirot, “we must look elsewhere for a solution of the open door mystery. One thing I am fairly sure of—they did not leave through the door. They left by the window.” “What?” “Precisely.” “But there were no footmarks in the flower bed underneath.” “No—and there ought to have been. Listen, Hastings. The gardener, Auguste, as you heard him say, planted both those beds the preceding afternoon. In the one there are plentiful impressions of his big hobnailed boots—in the other, none! You see? Some one had passed that way, some one who, to obliterate their footprints, smoothed over the surface of the bed with a rake.” “Where did they get a rake?” “Where they got the spade and the gardening gloves,” said Poirot impatiently. “There is no difficulty about that.” “What makes you think that they left that way, though? Surely it is more probable that they entered by the window, and left by the door.” “That is possible of course. Yet I have a strong idea that they left by the window.” “I think you are wrong.” “Perhaps, mon ami.” I mused, thinking over the new field of conjecture that Poirot’s deductions had opened up to me. I recalled my wonder at his cryptic allusions to the flower bed and the wrist watch. His remarks had seemed so meaningless at the moment and now, for the first time, I realized how remarkably, from a few slight incidents, he had unravelled much of the mystery that surrounded the case. I paid a belated homage to my friend. As though he read my thoughts, he nodded sagely. “Method, you comprehend! Method! Arrange your facts. Arrange your ideas. And if some little fact will not fit in—do not reject it but consider it closely. Though its significance escapes you, be sure that it is significant.” “In the meantime,” I said, considering, “although we know a great deal more than we did, we are no nearer to solving the mystery of who killed Mr. Renauld.” “No,” said Poirot cheerfully. “In fact we are a great deal further off.” The fact seemed to afford him such peculiar satisfaction that I gazed at him in wonder. He met my eye and smiled. “But yes, it is better so. Before, there was at all events a clear theory as to how and by whose hands he met his death. Now that is all gone. We are in darkness. A hundred conflicting points confuse and worry us. That is well. That is excellent. Out of confusion comes forth order. But if you find order to start with, if a crime seems simple and above-board, eh bien, méfiez vous! It is, how do you say it?—cooked! The great criminal is simple—but very few criminals are great. In trying to cover up their tracks, they invariably betray themselves. Ah, mon ami, I would that some day I could meet a really great criminal—one who commits his crime, and then—does nothing! Even I, Hercule Poirot, might fail to catch such a one.” But I had not followed his words. A light had burst upon me. “Poirot! Mrs. Renauld! I see it now. She must be shielding somebody.” From the quietness with which Poirot received my remark, I could see that the idea had already occurred to him. “Yes,” he said thoughtfully. “Shielding some one—or screening some one. One of the two.” I saw very little difference between the two words, but I developed my theme with a good deal of earnestness. Poirot maintained a strictly non-committal attitude, repeating: “It may be—yes, it may be. But as yet I do not know! There is something very deep underneath all this. You will see. Something very deep.” Then, as we entered our hotel, he enjoined silence on me with a gesture. About HackerNoon Book Series: We bring you the most important technical, scientific, and insightful public domain books. This book is part of the public domain. Agatha Christie (2019). The Murder on the Links. Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/58866/pg58866-images.html This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org , located at https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html.

Poirot Elucidates Certain Points

Imparting a certain mystery to the most familiar objects

CERTAIN OTHER REASONS OR ARGUMENTS TO PROVE A PASSAGE BY THE NORTH-WEST

Voyages in Search of the North-West Passage by Richard Hakluyt is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book here . Chapter VIII CERTAIN REASONS ALLEGED FOR THE PROVING OF A PASSAGE BY THE NORTH-EAST BEFORE THE QUEEN’S MAJESTY, AND CERTAIN LORDS OF THE COUNCIL, BY MASTER ANTHONY JENKINSON, WITH MY SEVERAL ANSWERS THEN USED TO THE SAME. Because you may understand as well those things alleged against me as what doth serve for my purpose, I have here added the reasons of Master Anthony Jenkinson, a worthy gentleman, and a great traveller, who conceived a better hope of the passage to Cathay from us to be by the north-east than by the north-west. He first said that he thought not to the contrary but that there was a passage by the north-west, according to mime opinion, but he was assured that there might be found a navigable passage by the north-east from England to go to all the east parts of the world, which he endeavoured to prove three ways. The first was, that he heard a fisherman of Tartary say in hunting the morse, that he sailed very far towards the south-east, finding no end of the sea, whereby he hoped a through passage to be that way. Whereunto I answered that the Tartars were a barbarous people, and utterly ignorant in the art of navigation, not knowing the use of the sea-card, compass, or star, which he confessed true; and therefore they could not (said I) certainly know the south-east from the north-east in a wide sea, and a place unknown from the sight of the land. Or if he sailed anything near the shore, yet he, being ignorant, might be deceived by the doubling of many points and capes, and by the trending of the land, albeit he kept continually along the shore. And further, it might be that the poor fisherman through simplicity thought that there was nothing that way but sea, because he saw mine land, which proof (under correction) giveth small assurance of a navigable sea by the north-east to go round about the world, for that he judged by the eye only, seeing we in this clear air do account twenty miles a ken at sea. His second reason is, that there was an unicorn’s horn found upon the coast of Tartary, which could not come (said he) thither by any other means than with the tides, through some strait in the north-east of the Frozen Sea, there being no unicorns in any part of Asia, saving in India and Cathay, which reason, in my simple judgment, has as little force. First, it is doubtful whether those barbarous Tartars do know an unicorn’s horn, yea or no; and if it were one, yet it is not credible that the sea could have driven it so far, it being of such nature that it cannot float. Also the tides running to and fro would have driven it as far back with the ebb as it brought it forward with the flood. There is also a beast called Asinus Indicus (whose horn most like it was), which hath but one horn like an unicorn in his forehead, whereof there is great plenty in all the north parts thereunto adjoining, as in Lapland, Norway, Finmark, etc., as Jocobus Zeiglerus writeth in his history of Scondia. And as Albertus saith, there is a fish which hath but one horn in his forehead like to an unicorn, and therefore it seemeth very doubtful both from whence it came, and whether it were an unicorn’s horn, yea or no. His third and last reason was, that there came a continual stream or current through the Frozen Sea of such swiftness, as a Colmax told him, that if you cast anything therein, it would presently be carried out of sight towards the west. Whereunto I answered, that there doth the like from Palus Maeotis, by the Euxine, the Bosphorus, and along the coast of Greece, etc., as it is affirmed by Contarenus, and divers others that have had experience of the same; and yet that sea lieth not open to any main sea that way, but is maintained by freshets, as by the Don, the Danube, etc. In like manner is this current in the Frozen Sea increased and maintained by the Dwina, the river Ob, etc. Now as I have here briefly recited the reasons alleged to prove a passage to Cathay by the north-east with my several answers thereunto, so will I leave it unto your judgment, to hope or despair of either at your pleasure. About HackerNoon Book Series: We bring you the most important technical, scientific, and insightful public domain books. This book is part of the public domain. Richard Hakluyt (2002). Voyages in Search of the North-West Passage. Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved October 2022 https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/3482/pg3482-images.html This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org , located at https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html .

CERTAIN REASONS ALLEGED FOR THE PROVING OF A PASSAGE BY THE NORTH-EAST BEFORE THE QUEEN’S MAJESTY

THE EFFECTS OF CERTAIN ALKALOID POISONS, OTHER SUBSTANCES AND VAPOURS

ON BUD-VARIATION, AND ON CERTAIN ANOMALOUS MODES OF REPRODUCTION AND VARIATION

First and Last Things by H. G. Wells, is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book here . A CRITICISM OF CERTAIN FORMS OF SOCIALISM A CRITICISM OF CERTAIN FORMS OF SOCIALISM. It is necessary to point out that a Socialism arising in this way out of the conception of a synthesis of the will and thought of the species will necessarily differ from conceptions of Socialism arrived at in other and different ways. It is based on a self-discontent and self-abnegation and not on self-satisfaction, and it will be a scheme of persistent thought and construction, essentially, and it will support this or that method of law-making, or this or that method of economic exploitation, or this or that matter of social grouping, only incidentally and in relation to that. Such a conception of Socialism is very remote in spirit, however it may agree in method, from that philanthropic administrative socialism one finds among the British ruling and administrative class. That seems to me to be based on a pity which is largely unjustifiable and a pride that is altogether unintelligent. The pity is for the obvious wants and distresses of poverty, the pride appears in the arrogant and aggressive conception of raising one’s fellows. I have no strong feeling for the horrors and discomforts of poverty as such, sensibilities can be hardened to endure the life led by the “Romans” in Dartmoor jail a hundred years ago (See “The Story of Dartmoor Prison” by Basil Thomson (Heinemann—1907).), or softened to detect the crumpled rose-leaf; what disgusts me is the stupidity and warring purposes of which poverty is the outcome. When it comes to the idea of raising human beings, I must confess the only person I feel concerned about raising is H.G. Wells, and that even in his case my energies might be better employed. After all, presently he must die and the world will have done with him. His output for the species is more important than his individual elevation. Moreover, all this talk of raising implies a classification I doubt. I find it hard to fix any standards that will determine who is above me and who below. Most people are different from me I perceive, but which among them is better, which worse? I have a certain power of communicating with other minds, but what experiences I communicate seem often far thinner and poorer stuff than those which others less expressive than I half fail to communicate and half display to me. My “inferiors,” judged by the common social standards, seem indeed intellectually more limited than I and with a narrower outlook; they are often dirtier and more driven, more under the stress of hunger and animal appetites; but on the other hand have they not more vigorous sensations than I, and through sheer coarsening and hardening of fibre, the power to do more toilsome things and sustain intenser sensations than I could endure? When I sit upon the bench, a respectable magistrate, and commit some battered reprobate for trial for this lurid offence or that, or send him or her to prison for drunkenness or such-like indecorum, the doubt drifts into my mind which of us after all is indeed getting nearest to the keen edge of life. Are I and my respectable colleagues much more than successful evasions of THAT? Perhaps these people in the dock know more of the essential strains and stresses of nature, are more intimate with pain. At any rate I do not think I am justified in saying certainly that they do not know... No, I do not want to raise people using my own position as a standard, I do not want to be one of a gang of consciously superior people, I do not want arrogantly to change the quality of other lives. I do not want to interfere with other lives, except incidentally—incidentally, in this way that I do want to get to an understanding with them, I do want to share and feel with them in our commerce with the collective mind. I suppose I do not stretch language very much when I say I want to get rid of stresses and obstacles between our minds and personalities and to establish a relation that is understanding and sympathy. I want to make more generally possible a relationship of communication and interchange, that for want of a less battered and ambiguous word I must needs call love. And if I disavow the Socialism of condescension, so also do I disavow the Socialism of revolt. There is a form of Socialism based upon the economic generalizations of Marx, an economic fatalistic Socialism that I hold to be rather wrong in its vision of facts, rather more distinctly wrong in its theory, and altogether wrong and hopeless in its spirit. It preaches, as inevitable, a concentration of property in the hands of a limited number of property owners and the expropriation of the great proletarian mass of mankind, a concentration which is after all no more than a tendency conditional on changing and changeable conventions about property, and it finds its hope of a better future in the outcome of a class conflict between the expropriated Many and the expropriating Few. Both sides are to be equally swayed by self-interest, but the toilers are to be gregarious and mutually loyal in their self-interest—Heaven knows why, except that otherwise the Marxist dream will not work. The experience of contemporary events seems to show at least an equal power of combination for material ends among owners and employers as among workers. Now this class-war idea is one diametrically opposed to that religious-spirited Socialism which supplies the form of my general activities. This class-war idea would exacerbate the antagonism of the interests of the many individuals against the few individuals, and I would oppose the conceiving of the Whole to the self-seeking of the Individual. The spirit and constructive intention of the many to-day are no better than those of the few, poor and rich alike are over-individualized, self-seeking and non-creative; to organize the confused jostling competitions, over-reachings, envies and hatreds of to-day into two great class-hatreds and antagonisms will advance the reign of love at most only a very little, only so far as it will simplify and make plain certain issues. It may very possibly not advance the reign of love at all, but rather shatter the order we have. Socialism, as I conceive it, and as I have presented it in my book, “New Worlds for Old,” seeks to change economic arrangements only by the way, as an aspect and outcome of a great change, a change in the spirit and method of human intercourse. I know that here I go beyond the limits many Socialists in the past, and some who are still contemporary, have set themselves. Much Socialism to-day seems to think of itself as fighting a battle against poverty and its concomitants alone. Now poverty is only a symptom of a profounder evil and is never to be cured by itself. It is one aspect of divided and dispersed purposes. If Socialism is only a conflict with poverty, Socialism is nothing. But I hold that Socialism is and must be a battle against human stupidity and egotism and disorder, a battle fought all through the forests and jungles of the soul of man. As we get intellectual and moral light and the realization of brotherhood, so social and economic organization will develop. But the Socialist may attack poverty for ever, disregarding the intellectual and moral factors that necessitate it, and he will remain until the end a purely economic doctrinaire crying in the wilderness in vain. And if I antagonize myself in this way to the philanthropic Socialism of kindly prosperous people on the one hand and to the fierce class-hatred Socialism on the other, still more am I opposed to that furtive Socialism of the specialist which one meets most typically in the Fabian Society. It arises very naturally out of what I may perhaps call specialist fatigue and impatience. It is very easy for writers like myself to deal in the broad generalities of Socialism and urge their adoption as general principles; it is altogether another affair with a man who sets himself to work out the riddle of the complications of actuality in order to modify them in the direction of Socialism. He finds himself in a jungle of difficulties that strain his intellectual power to the utmost. He emerges at last with conclusions, and they are rarely the obvious conclusions, as to what needs to be done. Even the people of his own side he finds do not see as he sees; they are, he perceives, crude and ignorant. Now I hold that his duty is to explain his discoveries and intentions until they see as he sees. But the specialist temperament is often not a generalizing and expository temperament. Specialists are apt to measure minds by their speciality and underrate the average intelligence. The specialist is appalled by the real task before him, and he sets himself by tricks and misrepresentations, by benevolent scoundrelism in fact, to effect changes he desires. Too often he fails even in that. Where he might have found fellowship he arouses suspicion. And even if a thing is done in this way, its essential merit is lost. For it is better, I hold, for a man to die of his disease than to be cured unwittingly. That is to cheat him of life and to cheat life of the contribution his consciousness might have given it. The Socialism of my beliefs rests on a profounder faith and broader proposition. It looks over and beyond the warring purposes of to-day as a general may look over and beyond a crowd of sullen, excited and confused recruits, to the day when they will be disciplined, exercised, trained, willing and convergent on a common end. It holds persistently to the idea of men increasingly working in agreement, doing things that are sane to do, on a basis of mutual helpfulness, temperance and toleration. It sees the great masses of humanity rising out of base and immediate anxieties, out of dwarfing pressures and cramped surroundings, to understanding and participation and fine effort. It sees the resources of the earth husbanded and harvested, economized and used with scientific skill for the maximum of result. It sees towns and cities finely built, a race of beings finely bred and taught and trained, open ways and peace and freedom from end to end of the earth. It sees beauty increasing in humanity, about humanity and through humanity. Through this great body of mankind goes evermore an increasing understanding, an intensifying brotherhood. As Christians have dreamt of the New Jerusalem so does Socialism, growing ever more temperate, patient, forgiving and resolute, set its face to the World City of Mankind. About HackerNoon Book Series: We bring you the most important technical, scientific, and insightful public domain books. This book is part of the public domain. H. G. Wells (2009). First and Last Things: A Confession of Faith and Rule of Life. Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved October 2022, https://www.gutenberg.org/files/4225/4225-h/4225-h.htm This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org , located at https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html .

A CRITICISM OF CERTAIN FORMS OF SOCIALISM

CERTAIN WHOLESALE ASPECTS OF MAN-MAKING

Wilkins makes Certain Objections

The Future in America by H. G. Wells, is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book here . CERTAIN WORKERS CERTAIN WORKERS I Those Who Do Not Get Let us now look a little at another aspect of this process of individualistic competition which is the economic process in America, and which is giving us on its upper side the spenders of Fifth Avenue, the slow accumulators of the Astor type, and the great getters of the giant business organizations, the Trusts and acquisitive finance. We have concluded that this process of free and open competition in business which, clearly, the framers of the American Constitution imagined to be immortal, does as a matter of fact tend to kill itself through the advantage property gives in the acquisition of more property. But before we can go on to estimate the further future of this process we must experiment with another question. What is happening to those who have not got and who are not getting wealth, who are, in fact, falling back in the competition? Now there can be little doubt to any one who goes to and fro in America that in spite of the huge accumulation of property in a few hands that is now in progress, there is still no general effect of impoverishment. To me, coming from London to New York, the effect of the crowd in the trolley-cars and subways and streets was one of exceptional prosperity. New York has no doubt its effects of noise, disorder, discomfort, and a sort of brutality, but to begin with one sees nothing of the underfed people, the numerous dingily clad and grayly housed people who catch the eye in London. Even in the congested arteries, the filthy back streets of the East Side I found myself saying, as a thing remarkable, "These people have money to spend." In London one travels long distances for two cents, and great regiments of people walk; in New York the universal fare is five cents and everybody rides. Common people are better gloved and better booted in America than in any European country I know, in spite of the higher prices for clothing here, the men wear ready-made suits, it is true, to a much greater extent, but they are newer and brighter than the London clerk's carefully brushed, tailor-made garments. Wages translated from dollars into shillings seem enormous. And there is no perceptible fall in wages going on. On the whole wages tend to rise. For almost all sorts of men, for working women who are not "refined," there is a limitless field of employment. The fact that a growing proportion of the wealth of the community is passing into the hands of a small minority of successful getters, is masked to superficial observation by the enormous increase of the total wealth. The growth process overrides the economic process and may continue to do so for many years. So that the great mass of the population is not consciously defeated in the economic game. It is only failing to get a large share in the increment of wealth. The European reader must dismiss from his mind any conception of the general American population as a mass of people undergoing impoverishment through the enrichment of the few. He must substitute for that figure a mass of people, very busy, roughly prosperous, generally self-satisfied, but ever and again stirred to bouts of irascibility and suspicion, inundated by a constantly swelling flood of prosperity that pours through it and over it and passes by it, without changing or enriching it at all. Ever and again it is irritated by some rise in price, an advance in coal, for example, or meat or rent, that swallows up some anticipated gain, but that is an entirely different thing from want or distress, from the fireless hungering poverty of Europe. NEW YORK'S CROWDED, LITTERED EAST SIDE Nevertheless, the sense of losing develops and spreads in the mass of the American people. Privations are not needed to create a sense of economic disadvantage; thwarted hopes suffice. The speed and pressure of work here is much greater than in Europe, the impatience for realization intenser. The average American comes into life prepared to "get on," and ready to subordinate most things in life to that. He encounters a rising standard of living. He finds it more difficult to get on than his father did before him. He is perplexed and irritated by the spectacle of lavish spending and the report of gigantic accumulations that outshine his utmost possibilities of enjoyment or success. He is a busy and industrious man, greatly preoccupied by the struggle, but when he stops to think and talk at all, there can be little doubt that his outlook is a disillusioned one, more and more tinged with a deepening discontent. II The Little Messenger-boy But the state of mind of the average American we have to consider later. That is the central problem of this horoscope we contemplate. Before we come to that we have to sketch out all the broad aspects of the situation with which that mind has to deal. Now in the preceding chapter I tried to convey my impression of the spending and wealth-getting of this vast community; I tried to convey how irresponsible it was, how unpremeditated. The American rich have, as it were, floated up out of a confused struggle of equal individuals. That indi vidualistic commercial struggle has not only flung up these rich to their own and the world's amazement, it is also, with an equal blindness, crushing and maiming great multitudes of souls. But this is a fact that does not smite upon one's attention at the outset. The English visitor to the great towns sees the spending, sees the general prosperity, the universal air of confident pride; he must go out of his way to find the under side to these things. One little thing set me questioning. I had been one Sunday night down-town, supping and talking with Mr. Abraham Cahan about the "East Side," that strange city within a city which has a drama of its own and a literature and a press, and about Russia and her problem, and I was returning on the subway about two o'clock in the morning. I became aware of a little lad sitting opposite me, a childish-faced delicate little creature of eleven years old or so, wearing the uniform of a messenger-boy. He drooped with fatigue, roused himself with a start, edged off his seat with a sigh, stepped off the car, and was vanishing up-stairs into the electric glare of Astor Place as the train ran out of the station. "What on earth," said I, "is that baby doing abroad at this time of night?" For me this weary little wretch became the irritant centre of a painful region of inquiry. "How many hours a day may a child work in New York," I began to ask people, "and when may a boy leave school?" I had blundered, I found, upon the weakest spot in America's fine front of national well-being. My eyes were opened to the childish newsboys who sold me papers, and the little bootblacks at the street corners. Nocturnal child employment is a social abomination. I gathered stories of juvenile vice, of lads of nine and ten suffering from terrible diseases, of the contingent sent by these messengers to the hospitals and jails. I began to realize another aspect of that great theory of the liberty of property and the subordination of the state to business, upon which American institutions are based. That theory has no regard for children. Indeed, it is a theory that disregards women and children, the cardinal facts of life altogether. They are private things.... It is curious how little we, who live in the dawning light of a new time, question the intellectual assumptions of the social order about us. We find ourselves in a life of huge confusions and many cruelties, we plan this and that to remedy and improve, but very few of us go down to the ideas that begot these ugly conditions, the laws, the usages and liberties that are now in their detailed expansion so perplexing, intricate, and overwhelming. Yet the life of man is altogether made up of will cast into the mould of ideas, and only by correcting ideas, changing ideas and replacing ideas are any ameliorations and advances to be achieved in human destiny. All other things are subordinate to that. Now the theory of liberty upon which the liberalism of Great Britain, the Constitution of the United States, and the bourgeois Republic of France rests, assumes that all men are free and equal. They are all tacitly supposed to be adult and immortal, they are sovereign over their property and over their wives and children, and everything is framed with a view to insuring them security in the enjoyment of their rights. No doubt this was a better theory than that of the divine right of kings, against which it did triumphant battle, but it does, as one sees it to-day, fall most extraordinarily short of the truth, and only a few logical fanatics have ever tried to carry it out to its complete consequences. For example, it ignored the facts that more than half of the adult people in a country are women, and that all the men and women of a country taken together are hardly as numerous and far less important to the welfare of that country than the individuals under age. It regarded living as just living, a stupid dead level of egotistical effort and enjoyment; it was blind to the fact that living is part growing, part learning, part dying to make way and altogether service and sacrifice. It asserted that the care and education of children, and business bargains affecting the employment and welfare of women and children, are private affairs. It resisted the compulsory education of children and factory legislation, therefore, with extraordinary persistence and bitterness. The common sense of the three great progressive nations concerned has been stronger than their theory, but to this day enormous social evils are to be traced to that passionate jealousy of state intervention between a man and his wife, his children, and other property, which is the distinctive unprecedented feature of the originally middle-class modern organization of society upon commercial and industrial conceptions in which we are all (and America most deeply) living. I began with a drowsy little messenger-boy in the New York Subway. Before I had done with the question I had come upon amazing things. Just think of it! This richest, greatest country the world has ever seen has over 1,700,000 children under fifteen years of age toiling in fields, factories, mines, and workshops. And Robert Hunter—whose Poverty, if I were autocrat, should be compulsory reading for every prosperous adult in the United States, tells me of "not less than eighty thousand children, most of whom are little girls, at present employed in the textile mills of this country. In the South there are now six times as many children at work as there were twenty years ago. Child labor is increasing yearly in that section of the country. Each year more little ones are brought in from the fields and hills to live in the degrading atmosphere of the mill towns."... Children are deliberately imported by the Italians. I gathered from Commissioner Watchorn at Ellis Island that the proportion of little nephews and nieces, friends' sons, and so forth, brought in by them is peculiarly high, and I heard him try and condemn a doubtful case. It was a particularly unattractive Italian in charge of a dull-eyed little boy of no ascertainable relationship.... In the worst days of cotton-milling in England the conditions were hardly worse than those now existing in the South. Children, the tiniest and frailest, of five and six years of age, rise in the morning and, like old men and women, go to the mills to do their day's labor; and when they return home, "wearily fling themselves on their beds, too tired to take off their clothes." Many children work all night—"in the maddening racket of the machinery, in an atmosphere unsanitary and clouded with humidity and lint." "It will be long," adds Mr. Hunter, in his description, "before I forget the face of a little boy of six years, with his hands stretched forward to rearrange a bit of machinery, his pallid face and spare form already showing the physical effects of labor. This child, six years of age, was working twelve hours a day." From Mr. Spargo's Bitter Cry of the Children I learn this much of the joys of certain among the youth of Pennsylvania: BREAKER BOYS AT A PENNSYLVANIA COLLIERY "For ten or eleven hours a day children of ten and eleven stoop over the chute and pick out the slate and other impurities from the coal as it moves past them. The air is black with coal-dust, and the roar of the crushers, screens, and rushing mill-race of coal is deafening. Sometimes one of the children falls into the machinery and is terribly mangled, or slips into the chute and is smothered to death. Many children are killed in this way. Many others, after a time, contract coal-miners' asthma and consumption, which gradually undermine their health. Breathing continually day after day the clouds of coal-dust, their lungs become black and choked with small particles of anthracite."... In Massachusetts, at Fall River, the Hon. J.F. Carey tells us how little naked boys, free Americans, work for Mr. Borden, the New York millionaire, packing cloth into bleaching vats in a bath of chemicals that bleaches their little bodies like the bodies of lepers.... Well, we English have no right to condemn the Americans for these things. The history of our own industrial development is black with the blood of tortured and murdered children. America still has the factory serfs. New Jersey sends her pauper children south to-day into worse than slavery, but, as Cottle tells in his reminiscences of Southey and Coleridge, that is precisely the same wretched export Bristol packed off to feed the mills of Manchester in late Georgian times. We got ahead with factory legislation by no peculiar virtue in our statecraft, it was just the revenge the landlords took upon the manufacturers for reform and free trade in corn and food. In America the manufacturers have had things to themselves. And America has difficulties to encounter of which we know nothing. In the matter of labor legislation each State legislature is supreme; in each separate State the forces of light and progress must fight the battle of the children and the future over again against interests, lies, prejudice and stupidity. Each State pleads the bad example of another State, and there is always the threat that capital will withdraw. No national minimum is possible under existing conditions. And when the laws have passed there is still the universal contempt for State control to reckon with, the impossibilities of enforcement. Illinois, for instance, scandalized at the spectacle of children in those filthy stock-yards, ankle-deep in blood, cleaning intestines and trimming meat, recently passed a child-labor law that raised the minimum age for such employment to sixteen, but evasion, they told me in Chicago, was simple and easy. New York, too, can show by its statute-books that my drowsy nocturnal messenger-boy was illegal and impossible.... This is the bottomest end of the scale that at the top has all the lavish spending of Fifth Avenue, the joyous wanton giving of Mr. Andrew Carnegie. Equally with these things it is an unpremeditated consequence of an inadequate theory of freedom. The foolish extravagances of the rich, the architectural pathos of Newport, the dingy, noisy, economic jumble of central and south Chicago, the Standard Oil offices in Broadway, the darkened streets beneath New York's elevated railroad, the littered ugliness of Niagara's banks, and the lower-most hell of child suffering are all so many accordant aspects and inexorable consequences of the same undisciplined way of living. Let each man push for himself—it comes to these things.... So far as our purpose of casting a horoscope goes we have particularly to note this as affecting the future; these working children cannot be learning to read—though they will presently be having votes—they cannot grow up fit to bear arms, to be in any sense but a vile computing sweater's sense, men. So miserably they will avenge themselves by supplying the stuff for vice, for crime, for yet more criminal and political manipulations. One million seven hundred children, practically uneducated, are toiling over here, and growing up, darkened, marred, and dangerous, into the American future I am seeking to forecast. About HackerNoon Book Series: We bring you the most important technical, scientific, and insightful public domain books. This book is part of the public domain. H. G. Wells (2018). The Future in America. Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved October 2022, from https://www.gutenberg.org/files/56484/56484-h/56484-h.htm This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org , located at https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html.

CERTAIN WORKERS

Certain Social Reactions

The Essays of Adam Smith, by Adam Smith is part of HackerNoon’s Book Blog Post series. You can jump to any chapter in this book here . OF THE AFFINITY BETWEEN CERTAIN ENGLISH AND ITALIAN VERSES OF THE AFFINITY BETWEEN CERTAIN ENGLISH AND ITALIAN VERSES THE measure of the verses, of which the octave of the Italians, their terzetti, and the greater part of their sonnets, are composed, seems to be as nearly the same with that of the English Heroic Rhyme, as the different genius and pronunciation of the two languages will permit. The English Heroic Rhyme is supposed to consist sometimes of ten, and sometimes of eleven syllables: of ten, when the verse ends with a single, and of eleven, when it ends with a double rhyme. The correspondent Italian verse is supposed to consist sometimes of ten, sometimes of eleven, and sometimes of twelve syllables, according as it happens to end with a single, a double, or a triple rhyme. The rhyme ought naturally to fall upon the last syllable of the verse; it is proper likewise that it should fall upon an accented syllable, in order to render it more sensible. When, therefore, the accent happens to fall, not upon the last syllable, but upon that immediately before it, the rhyme must fall both upon the accented syllable and upon that which is not accented. It must be a double rhyme. In the Italian language, when the accent falls neither upon the last syllable, nor upon that immediately before it, but upon the third syllable from the end, the rhyme must fall upon all the three. It must be a triple rhyme, and the verse is supposed to consist of twelve syllables: Forsè era ver, non però credìbile, &c. Triple rhymes are not admitted into English Heroic Verse. In the Italian language the accent falls much more rarely, either upon the third syllable from the end of a word, or upon the last syllable, than it does upon the one immediately before the last. In reality, this second syllable from the end seems, in that language, to be its most common and natural place. The Italian Heroic Poetry, therefore, is composed principally of double rhymes, or of verses supposed to consist of eleven syllables. Triple rhymes occur but seldom, and single rhymes still more seldom. In the English language the accent falls frequently upon the last syllable of the word. Our language, besides, abounds in words of one syllable, the greater part of which do (for there are few which do not) admit of being accented. Words of one syllable are most frequently the concluding words of English rhymes. For both these reasons, English Heroic Rhyme is principally composed of single rhymes, or of verses supposed to consist of ten syllables. Double Rhymes occur almost as rarely in it, as either single or triple do in the Italian. The rarity of double rhymes in English Heroic Verse makes them appear odd, and awkward, and even ludicrous, when they occur. By the best writers, therefore, they are reserved for light and ludicrous occasions; when, in order to humour their subject, they stoop to a more familiar style than usual. When Mr. Pope says; Worth makes the man, and want of it the fellow; The rest is all but leather or prunello; he means, in compliance with his subject, to condescend a good deal below the stateliness of his diction on the Essay on Man. Double rhymes abound more in Dryden than in Pope, and in Butler’s Hudibras more than in Dryden. The rarity both of single and of triple rhyme in Italian Heroic Verse, gives them the same odd and ludicrous air which double rhymes have in English Verse. In Italian, triple rhymes occur more frequently than single rhymes. The slippery, or if I may be allowed to use a very low, but a very expressive word, the glib pronunciation of the triple rhyme (verso sotrucciolo) seems to depart less from the ordinary movement of the double rhyme, than the abrupt ending of the single rhyme (verso tronco e cadente), of the verse that appears to be cut off and to fall short of the usual measure. Single rhymes accordingly appear in Italian verse much more burlesque than triple rhymes. Single rhymes occur very rarely in Ariosto; but frequently in the more burlesque poem of Ricciardetto. Triple rhymes occur much oftener in all the best writers. It is thus, that what in English appears to be the verse of the greatest gravity and dignity, appears in Italian to be the most burlesque and ludicrous; for no other reason, I apprehend, but because in the one language it is the ordinary verse, whereas in the other it departs most from the movements of ordinary verse. The common Italian Heroic Poetry being composed of double rhymes, it can admit both of single and of triple rhymes; which seem to recede from the common movement on opposite sides to nearly equal distances. The common English Heroic Poetry, consisting of single rhymes, it can admit of double; but it cannot admit of triple rhymes, which would recede so far from the common movements as to appear perfectly burlesque and ridiculous. In English, when a word accented upon the third syllable from the end happens to make the last word of a verse, the rhyme falls upon the last syllable only. It is a single rhyme, and the verse consists of no more than ten syllables: but as the last syllable is not accented, it is an imperfect rhyme, which, however, when confined to the second verse of the couplet, and even there introduced but rarely, may have a very agreeable grace, and the line may even seem to run more easy and natural by means of it: Bùt of this fràme, the beàrings, and the tìes. The strìct connèctions, nìce depèndencies, &c. When by a well accented syllable in the end of the first line of a couplet, it has once been clearly ascertained what the rhyme is to be, a very slight allusion to it, such as can be made by a syllable of the same termination that is not accented, may often be sufficient to mark the coincidence in the second line; a word of this kind in the end of the first line seldom succeeds so well: Th’ inhabitants of old Jerusalem Were Jebusites; the town so called from them. A couplet in which both verses were terminated in this manner, would be extremely disagreeable and offensive. In counting the syllables, even of verses which to the ear appear sufficiently correct, a considerable indulgence must frequently be given, before they can, in either language, be reduced to the precise number of ten, eleven, or twelve, according to the nature of the rhyme. In the following couplet, for example, there are, strictly speaking, fourteen syllables in the first line, and twelve in the second. And many a hŭmoŭrous, many an amorous lay, Was sung by many a bard, on many a day. By the rapidity, however, or, if I may use a very low word a second time, by the glibness of the pronunciation, those fourteen syllables in the first line, and those twelve in the second, appear to take up the time but of ten ordinary syllables. The words many a, though they plainly consist of three distinct syllables, or sounds, which are all pronounced successively, or the one after the other, yet pass as but two syllables; as do likewise these words, hŭmoŭroŭs, and amorous. The words heaven and given, in the same manner, consist each of them of two syllables, which, how rapidly so ever they may be pronounced, cannot be pronounced but successively, or the one after the other. In verse, however, they are considered as consisting but of one syllable. In counting the syllables of the Italian Heroic Verse, still greater indulgences must be allowed: three vowels must there frequently be counted as making but one syllable, though they are all pronounced, rapidly indeed, but in succession, or the one after the other, and though no two of them are supposed to make a diphthong. In these licenses too, the Italians seem not to be very regular, and the same concourse of vowels which in one place makes but one syllable, will in another sometimes make two. There are even some words which in the end of a verse are constantly counted for two syllables, but which in any other part of it are never counted for more than one; such as the words suo, tuo, suoi, tuoi. Ruscelli observes, that in the Italian Heroic Verse the accent ought to fall upon the fourth, the sixth, the eighth, and the tenth syllables; and that if it falls upon the third, the fifth, the seventh, or the ninth syllables, it will spoil the verse. In English, if the accent falls upon any of the above-mentioned odd syllables, it equally spoils the verse. Bow’d their stiff necks, loaden with stormy blasts, though a line of Milton, has not the ordinary movement of an English Heroic Verse, the accent falls upon the third and sixth syllables. In Italian frequently, and in English sometimes, an accent is with great grace thrown upon the first syllable, in which case it seldom happens that any other syllable is accented before the fourth; Cánto l’armé pietóse e’l capitáno. Fírst in these fiélds I trý the sýlvan stráins. Both in English and in Italian the second syllable may be accented with great grace, and it generally is so when the first syllable is not accented: E in van l’ inferno a’ lui s’ oppose; e in vano S’ armó d’ Asia, e di Libia il popol misto, &c. Let us, since life can little more supply Than just to look about us, and to die, &c. Both in English and in Italian Verse, an accent, though it must never be misplaced, may sometimes be omitted with great grace. In the last of the above-quoted English Verses there is no accent upon the eighth syllable; the conjunction and not admitting of any. In the following Italian Verse there is no accent upon the sixth syllable: O Musa, tu, che di caduchi allori, &c. The preposition di will as little admit of an accent as the conjunction and. In this case, however, when the even syllable is not accented, neither of the odd syllables immediately before or behind it must be accented. Neither in English nor in Italian can two accents running be omitted. It must be observed, that in Italian there are two accents, the grave and the acute: the grave accent is always marked by a slight stroke over the syllable to which it belongs; the acute accent has no mark. The English language knows no distinction between the grave and the acute accents. The same author observes, that in the Italian Verse the Pause, or what the grammarians call the Cesura, may with propriety be introduced after either the third, the fourth, the fifth, the sixth, or the seventh syllables. The like observations have been made by several different writers upon the English Heroic Verse. Dobie admires particularly the verse in which there are two pauses; one after the fifth, and another after the ninth syllable. The example he gives is from Petrarch: Nel dolce tempo de la prima etade, &c. In this verse, the second pause, which he says comes after the ninth syllable, in reality comes in between the two vowels, which, in the Italian way of counting syllables, compose the ninth syllable. It may be doubtful, therefore, whether this pause may not be considered as coming after the eighth syllable. I do not recollect any good English Verse in which the pause comes in after the ninth syllable. We have many in which it comes in after the eighth: Yet oft, before his infant eyes, would run, &c. In which verse there are two pauses; one after the second, and the other after the eighth syllable. I have observed many Italian Verses in which the pause comes after the second syllable. Both the English and the Italian Heroic Verse, perhaps, are not so properly composed of a certain number of syllables, which vary according to the nature of the rhyme; as of a certain number of intervals, (of five invariably,) each of which is equal in length, or time, to two ordinary distinct syllables, though it may sometimes contain more, of which the extraordinary shortness compensates the extraordinary number. The close frequently of each of those intervals, but always of every second interval, is marked by a distinct accent. This accent may frequently, with great grace, fall upon the beginning of the first interval; after which, it cannot, without spoiling the verse, fall any where but upon the close of an interval. The syllable or syllables which come after the accent that closes the fifth interval are never accented. They make no distinct interval, but are considered as a sort of excrescence of the verse, and are in a manner counted for nothing. THE END. About HackerNoon Book Series: We bring you the most important technical, scientific, and insightful public domain books. This book is part of the public domain. Smith, Adam. 2018. The Essays of Adam Smith. Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved May 2022 from https://www.gutenberg.org/files/58559/58559-h/58559-h.htm#page468 This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org , located at https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html .

The Essays of Adam Smith: OF THE AFFINITY BETWEEN CERTAIN ENGLISH AND ITALIAN VERSES

As I get older, something that becomes abundantly clear is that no one has any clue what the hell is going on. I was listening to an interview with last night. Graham wrote a book called in the ’90s. It highlighted elements of human history that challenged the traditional narrative. Graham Hancock Fingerprint of the Gods Graham wasn’t taken very seriously by the boys club that is modern archeology, and much of his findings were brushed off as the results of pseudo-science. If you look Graham up on Wikipedia, it says he practices “pseudo-archeology”. Yet, as I researched Graham and the evidence he cited, I found myself taken aback. It didn’t seem as if his hypotheses were unfounded conspiracies, they seemed almost as probable as what we currently consider as scientific fact. Our current understanding of human history is that the first form of modern-day civilization appeared about 5,000–6,500 years ago. Around 4,500–3,000 BC with a group called the . From there, modern history tells us; we started to work together, established norms and values, eventually started to map out the world; travel and explore; and finally, develop into the medley of trauma-driven; coffee chugging; biological mood-rings that we are today. Sumer The only problem with believing that human civilization only existed 5,000–6,500 years in the past, is that recent evidence doesn’t agree with it. Gobleki Tepe proved that history is wrong, but no one cares A temple called in Turkey was estimated to be around 11,000 years old. Graham Hancock believed this to be evidence that despite popular belief, there were organized civilizations in that period. How else would they put together a temple with organized and intentionally placed 7-ton pillars? Gobleki Tepe The response from modern historians and archeologists was, “Well how do you know hunter-gatherers couldn’t have done this?”, “If there were advanced societies at the time how come we don’t find old plastic bottles or other signs of advanced life?”… Sidenote: yes a lack of fossilized plastic bottles has been used as reasoning for why civilizations couldn’t have existed over 6,5000 years ago. I’m the highest form of the current evolved human and I can barely get a screen protector perfectly aligned with the screen of my iPhone. How the hell did a bunch of “hunter-gatherers” who had no form of civilization and community pull this off? “To carve, erect and bury rings of seven-ton stone pillars would have required hundreds of workers, all needing to be fed and housed.” — The Smithsonian This is a really big deal, but I get how it didn’t receive a lot of media attention. It doesn’t prove or disprove any assumptions we have, as much as it begs the question; how much do we know about human history? However, this story and the lack of attention it had when first published shows us how modern historians and archeologists examine new information and decide whether or not to add it into the greater narrative of human history: they don’t. There are even maps that we’ve discovered that . How were ancient humans both traveling across the world and accurately mapping it without professions that can only exist in civilized societies? depict landmasses and objects that have been submerged since the end of Ice Age How a mastodon changed history I’ve excitedly called friends about this subject only to find that they don’t care about it. So, I’m going to try and over-explain this to make sure we’re all understanding the potential gravity of this discovery. An archeologist in America dug up fossilized remains of a mastodon that were found to be . 130,000 years old Big deal right? . Who cares Photo by on Edoardo Busti Unsplash the mastodon’s bones had been cracked by tools that could have been man-made. The bone marrow had been extracted from one of its tusks, similarly to how early humans used to perform the same act. There is some debate on whether or not the tools used to break the bones were made by humans, but and form your own opinion. Plot twist: check out the evidence yourself I don’t understand how more people aren’t talking about this, why it isn’t front-page news on every media outlet that exists. This means, potentially, that our understanding of human history isn’t just a little off, it could be completely wrong. Here’s a professionally illustrated timeline, I spent hours on to help show how big of a deal this is. “Human Existence Timeline in French” — Reza Jafery, 2019 As you can see, the timeline above displays the current understanding of human history. That circa 5,000 years ago our ancestors formed the first civilization; Sumer, and that this first form of civilization eventually turned into the society we all struggle to function within today. It’s believed that at this point, homo sapiens had never stepped foot in the Americas. Which makes the fact that the mastodon fossils were discovered in California, a really big deal. In that section of the timeline between “5,000 years ago” and “Today”; we invented cars, planes, trains, the internet, guns, democracy, communism, basketball, figure skating, space ships, sex toys, Dance Dance Revolution, Harry Potter fanfiction, memes, and the profession of being a mime. minuscule We also discovered gravity, learned the general nature of our solar system, how to navigate using the stars, machine-learning, self-driving cars, what plants you could eat and not die, what plants you can eat and get high, that you can light stuff on fire and smoke it, and that women don’t like being objectified. All of that happened in that tiny space between the professionally illustrated line at “5,000 years ago” and the present day. We were only able to make these discoveries because we formed civilizations. Civilizations allowed us to diversify our time and talents as a society, to focus on aspirations beyond “survival”. Which brings me to my next illustration. “Viva La Existance!” — Reza Jafery, 2019 This is the same timeline (and one of my eyelashes), but now that we’ve thought about how much humans have accomplished in the past 5,000 years, imagine what our predecessors accomplished with all the time they might have had. If we’re to assume for a moment that Graham Hancock and the archeologists who discovered the mastodon in California are correct, and the remains do imply that humans were in the Americas at this time: what does that mean for history? For one, it’d mean that we have to rethink how uncivilized we think a lot of our ancestors were. Humans existing in the Americas at that time would mean that they traveled 1,000’s and 1,000’s of miles over the ocean; in a period when we didn’t believe people could collaborate for much more than group hunts. How long would it take these humans to form a civilization — given how much we’ve accomplished with our share of the timeline? The problem with Graham’s theories was that they completely upended the timeline of human history that everyone currently breathing was taught. They showed how difficult it is to ruffle the feathers of history. Humanity’s need to be certain is holding us back from evolving our society My biggest takeaway from listening to Graham’s interview wasn’t astonishment at the thought of ancient civilizations pre-dating our current knowledge. It was disbelief, that the world of science and academic research is so broken and dis-incentivized that it pressures scientists and archeologists to find and publish research that supports already established theories and scientific “facts”. If you’re a scientist, and you want to make a living pursuing academic research, your income and ability to obtain grants largely depend on the number of times you’ve been published in widely recognized academic journals. Academic journals have been around for a long time, and typically don’t like to publish things that challenge findings they’ve been large supporters of in the past. This leads to a cycle of cognitive bias and to be completely blunt, academic circle-jerking; where the evidence brought to attention is rarely framed as anything but further proof of assumptions we already have. It’s mind-blowing that this research wasn’t taken seriously, and that we, as humans, haven’t put more time and effort into finding out what our ancestors 130,000 years ago were doing. How advanced could a culture have gotten in 130,000 years? Did they exist for the majority of that time? Did they have the same values as us? Did they also like watching videos of people building houses underground at 3 AM? I’ll probably never get answers to these questions, not in my lifetime. The cold truth of the situation is, although there is solid evidence that our understanding of human history is wrong, it’d be a lot of paperwork to write that into all of our history books; and it would require authority figures to admit that they’ve been wrong for a very long time. I’m not saying I don’t understand why people have taken such a hard stance of “certainty” around things. Whether it be religion or human history, it’s hard to get people to care about something that you’re not 100% sure about. Do you think Jesus would have been able to convince his disciples to follow him if he only there was a god? thought Could history teachers get kids to pay attention if what they were learning was “ ” what happened? maybe-sorta

How Humanity’s Need to Be Certain Is Holding Us Back from Evolving Our Society

Certainty Theater

If I’m sure about one thing, it’s that the pseudo-currency bitcoin is a massive bubble and destined to explode in everyone’s faces. There’s no need for any technical analysis or comparisons to the tulip mania of the 1600’s or dot-com boom. I have a much simpler, more scientifically grounded reason why bitcoin will fail: It stirs my imagination. It gets me dreaming about a wild, uncertain future with infinite potential. Basically, it excites me. And nothing that has ever excited me has turned out good. In review: When I was six years old, Patrice Fullbright, with her beautiful blonde hair and dimpled smile, excited me. And you know what happened there? I tried to give Patrice a Valentine’s Day card. And she me. Then she told everyone I had cooties. Do you want to get kicked? If so, buy bitcoin. Do you want to be a laughing stock? Invest your life savings! kicked A few years later, my dad brought home a toy plane for me. And then the darkness started creeping in: I got excited about the idea of becoming an airline pilot. Can you guess what happened next? I found out that I had bad peripheral vision, and my dreams would never work out. My parents took me to a flight simulator at our local museum, where I got the lowest score ever recorded. I crashed, repeatedly. And that’s the ending bitcoin’s got in store for you. Not convinced, yet? Bitcoin gives me flashbacks to high school, when I painted my first canvas in art class. I was realistic enough by this point to know that I probably hadn’t knocked the project out of the park, but I was still excited to show that painting to everyone, get their honest feedback, and improve. You know what I received instead of real input? A bunch of half-hearted comments like “We really like it!” and a few lukewarm pats on the back. Those people were to me. Just like bitcoin advocates are lying to you. lying Excitement’s next disguise was political advocacy. Somehow, I got it in my head that I could change the world. In college, I petitioned and protested and spread the word about the causes that got me most fired up. But the nation’s agenda just kept shifting over and over and over in circles until I finally realized that all my efforts at bettering humanity were just like any effort at investing in bitcoin is bound to be — futile. The deadliest sign though is that bitcoin reminds me of the night I met my wife. I was over the moon when I met Catherine. I actually thought I was . And you know what that evil feeling, sent straight from Satan himself, actually was? It’s taken thirty-two years for it to finally wear down and allow me to stop trying to force Catherine to live up to my unrealistic expectations of her. And now, after learning to eradicate all excitement from our lives, we’re finally happy and content, in a way that anyone who puts even a small fraction of their savings into bitcoin most certainly will never be. in love Excitement. Mania! I like to think that through my life experiences, I have attained a certain level of immunity against excitement — a force field, of sorts…a wisdom. Just the other day, my only son announced he’s having his first child, a daughter. And instead of dreaming about long walks down the promenade with her in a stroller, pinching her cheeks, and showering her with gifts, you know what the first word that came to my mind was? Miscarriage. But bitcoin is different. It pierces through my outer shell and touches something deep inside of me. It kindles a sense of wonder, no matter how hard I try to suppress it. When I see bitcoin’s value wildly jumping on the news or hear about it being listed on more and more exchanges or being accepted by an even greater number of merchants, I can’t stop myself from feeling hopeful. For some reason, I can’t drown out that excited little voice in the back of my head saying: What if…? Couldn’t we just BELIEVE…? Just this once…? And that is why we should not invest in it. exactly …right?

Why Bitcoin Is Most Certainly, 100% A Bubble (Trust Me) !

Slack + MetaCert = the safest messaging platform to share web links — whether you are a company concerned about insider threats, or an open community concerned about phishing attacks. Both are real threats as cyberattacks migrate from email to messaging. MetaCert released a new today. I’d go as far as to say that “MetaCert for Slack” should win just about every infosec award that’s available. This is an engineering feat that will literally save the world for many — by helping them not lose their entire life’s savings while encouraging them to invest more money in more Token launches and ICO. killer feature This only possible because MetaCert has enterprise-grade security infrastructure on the backend end with the world’s most advanced threat intelligence system. It’s not a simple bot by any means of the imagination. It might look that way because it takes about 7 seconds to install. Trust me, it’s not. The guts of the platform alone cost over $1m to build over a two year period. Think of MetaCert as “Stripe for Security” in the sense that all of our products are powered by a single API with just seven lines of code. It’s that API that will return the classification of a URL after checking over 3,000 shortening services, finding the destination site and then checking that against 10 billion URIs — all in under 190ms. Auto delete DMs with phishing links After you inside your Slack, it will automatically protect your channels. But, you must ask users to “activate” the MetaCert bot to protect their DMs. This is a two-click job so will take them less than 5 seconds to do. I recommend you do this by sending regular requests in your main channel. install MetaCert As soon as a user activates the bot, MetaCert will automatically deleted DMs that contain known phishing links — before they even know they had a message. Auto delete DMs that contain dodgy keywords We added a new feature today that will reduce phishing inside Slack, by up to 99% — provided users activate the bot and as our app champion, you add the right keywords. You can add as many keywords or phrases as you like. The video below shows you how to setup the filter and how it works inside a Slack. Disable DMs completely You can also completely disable DMs for everyone except for your core team too. . Here’s a post that explains how to do that ** **👏” on the left side of the screen to 🔒 ☞ Please tap or click “ let Paul and others know that you appreciated this post. The number of claps indicates how much you liked the post and support its content, so put those hands together as many times as you like.

How to automatically deleted Slack Direct Messages that contain certain keywords

How long have you been grunting, “I hate my job” in complete frustration, scouring the web at night for an alternative option? You’re just trying to find a way to start making money elsewhere; like online or starting a local . business Unfortunately, with all the resources available to you online, the internet doesn’t seem to be much help at all. You’re , but you don’t want to be too hasty; do something you’ll regret later. yearning to take the leap I can think of something worse than losing your only source of income. Losing your sanity, losing your passion, wasting time where you’re not valued, being miserable… somebody stop me because I can go all day. You need clarity. You have to know for sure if this is something you need to do. I’m going to give you the rundown of specific signs that will tell you when it’s time to quit your job and I’ll even give you some methods you can use to quit. 1. YOU WANT TO DO THINGS YOUR WAY I’ve read words that made my blood run cold. Managers telling employees, “You’re not paid to think.” What! What? What! Even if your supervisor hasn’t said something like that to you, they could be implying it. They want you to stick to one way of doing things, even if your way is faster and easier. They don’t care. The company wants it that way, they’ll have it that way. If this frustrates you and it feels like you’re being placed in a box, it’s time to quit your job. They aren’t allowing you to grow. Even worse, they aren’t giving you the opportunity to develop your skills and discover the abilities that come naturally for you. 2. YOUR DEGREE FEELS LIKE A WASTE OF TIME We went to college, investing years of our time only to end up at a job where we don’t even use it. I won’t jump into the debate about whether the value of having a degree has decreased over the years, but I will say that time spent in college should not equal time wasted in college. If your job isn’t utilizing your expertise or expanding on the knowledge you racked up in college, then it’s time to move on. 3. OVERWORKED You work hard and you’re great at what you do. What’s the reward? You get an increased workload without an increase in pay. But, isn’t that anywhere you go? It’s true, if you start a business and you impress your clients, you’ll probably have five more clients in your inbox ready to put you to work. The difference is, the more in-demand you are, the more people are willing to pay for you. What you once made from 5 jobs, you can make with only one. Beats working for someone else any day. 4. PASSED YOU UP ON A PROMOTION…. AGAIN How many times are you going to let your job overlook you in favor of someone else? Especially someone who isn’t nearly as good as you are. They have a lack of respect for your unique skill set and it’s degrading to have someone else swoop in and take the spot you’ve worked so hard for. But, that’s the politics of the workplace, and you have no choice but to go along with it and wait your turn. It’s not fun watching someone else move up the ranks while you go unnoticed. 5. YOU’RE STUCK It’s one of the simple joys of life to be the best version of yourself. It’s all about going from average to extraordinary. However, at your job you feel stagnant. Entrepreneurs hate being micro-managed. Having someone looking over your shoulder all the time because they don’t trust you to do what they’re paying you to do. You need freedom. This means ; becoming smarter, wiser, faster. Your job doesn’t give you the room to achieve that, so you feel stuck. growth How can you not? They tell you what to do, you do it. The End. They disregard your input and care more about the bottom line than they do about making things better, both for the employees and the customers. If you’re bored of doing the same thing over and over every single day, and you’re sick of remaining stagnant, scratch that itch and quit your job. 6. REBEL AT HEART All entrepreneurs have one thing in common. They’re rebels. They rebel against authority and push back against the norm. Your 9–5 is not the place to channel your inner rebel. It’s the place to conform and stay in your space. Branching off to become an entrepreneur would give you the release you so desperately need. You will finally have the and to claim your unique position in society. Your 9–5 is not the place to channel your inner rebel. room to challenge yourself 7. YOUR MIND IS TURNING TO MUSH Do you feel like you’re being challenged intellectually at work? Mentally stimulating challenges are what keep people’s blood pumping and excited to go to work. Your job should challenge you to rethink the impossible. If you find yourself unable to focus on what you’re doing and it feels like you do more chatting than working, then you aren’t being challenged intellectually at all. Your job has become too easy and too automated. When you quit your job and work for yourself, you’ll find that you use critical problem-solving skills every day. Your schedule becomes unpredictable and spontaneous. The beauty of entrepreneurship is that you are in complete control to make all the decisions. 8. YOU’RE YEARNING TO TRAVEL Traveling is a unique opportunity to explore other cultures, meet different types of people and develop a sense of appreciation for your own story. Seeing how the other side lives will help put your own life into perspective. You’ll find that there are an infinite amount of things that are more important than money. However, you can’t just pack your bags and get on a plane if you have a 9–5. Most entrepreneurs eventually get to a place where they’re making money without having to be physically present. Also, you’ll find ways to contribute to your business from anywhere. Your travels will inspire your business decisions and help you to refine your core values. 9. ALL YOUR FREE TIME IS SPENT ON YOUR HOBBIES What do you do when you’re not working? This is a good place to start when you’re trying to come up with a good business idea. This is also an indication that you’re not happy with your job. You’re trying to find alternative ways to express yourself because you’re frustrated that you don’t have the opportunity to do what you love to do. 10. EVERYBODY GETS ON YOUR NERVES Eye rolling, leg shaking, deep sighing are all signs that the people at your job are working on your very last nerve. Especially your manager, who for the record, doesn’t even work! You watch them sit on their throne dictating orders while they waste their own time and micro-manage your time. This is a symptom that you secretly hate your job. It’s a personal thing, and it can only be cured by quitting. 11. YOU THINK YOU’RE GOING TO BE FIRED If you loved your job, you would be less focused on brooding about the possibility of getting fired, and more focused on proving yourself. You think you’re going to get fired because you want to get fired. You want a valid reason for taking the leap and becoming an entrepreneur. What if you quit your job and you failed as a business owner? You’d hate yourself for disappointing everyone who is depending on you. Not in the mood to share? I get it…you can Pin instead! This is a condensed version of an article that first appeared on . the new digital destination for actionable goals to go from employee to entrepreneur. SipBlack.net

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