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Title: A Hero and Some Other Folks

Author: William A. Quayle

Release Date: October 27, 2006 [eBook #19647]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)

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A HERO AND SOME OTHER FOLKS

by

WILLIAM A. QUAYLE

Author of "The Poet's Poet and Other Essays"

Cincinnati: Jennings & Pye
New York: Eaton & Mains
Copyright, 1900, by
The Western Methodist Book Concern

_To think some one will care to listen to us, and to believe we do not
speak to vacant air but to listening hearts, is always sweet. That
friends have listened to this author's spoken and written words with
apparent gladness emboldens him to believe they will give him hearing
once again._

_May some one's eyes be lightened, some one's burden be lifted from his
shoulders for an hour of rest, some one's landscape grow larger,
fairer, and more fruitful, because these essays have been written._

WILLIAM A. QUAYLE.

Contents

I. JEAN VALJEAN
II. SOME WORDS ON LOVING SHAKESPEARE
III. CALIBAN
IV. WILLIAM THE SILENT
V. THE ROMANCE OF AMERICAN GEOGRAPHY
VI. ICONOCLASM IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY LITERATURE
VII. TENNYSON THE DREAMER
VIII. THE AMERICAN HISTORIANS
IX. KING ARTHUR
X. THE STORY OF THE PICTURES
XI. THE GENTLEMAN IN LITERATURE
XII. THE DRAMA OF JOB

A Hero and Some Other Folks

I

Jean Valjean

The hero is not a luxury, but a necessity. We can no more do without
him than we can do without the sky. Every best man and woman is at
heart a hero-worshiper. Emerson acutely remarks that all men admire
Napoleon because he was themselves in possibility. They were in
miniature what he was developed. For a like though nobler reason, all
men love heroes. They are ourselves grown tall, puissant, victorious,
and sprung into nobility, worth, service. The hero electrifies the
world; he is the lightning of the soul, illuminating our sky,
clarifying the air, making it thereby salubrious and delightful. What