This is a list of everything available here (except for a few small riddle-answer HTML files, and all the in-line .gif's).
These e-texts have been compressed as binary .zip files. If you click on the links below, your browser should download the file and give you an opportunity to save it to disk (since the HTTP content-type is "application/zip"). Once you have the file on disk, you can uncompress it with the shareware programs PKUNZIP (MS-DOS only), ZipIt (Macintosh only), or any of several of MS-Windows programs -- or with the free GNU unzip program available on a number of platforms (you can also uncompress the files with the GNU gunzip program, if the .zip file extensions are renamed to .gz). If you copy a .zip file between systems, remember to use binary transfer mode. Note that the plain ASCII e-texts have CR-LF linebreaks.
The Country Wedding is engraved from a painting by Krimmel, an artist not sufficiently known to be duly appreciated. He is a native of Germany, but long since chose this country for his residence, and has painted many pictures in which the style of Wilkie -- so much admired in England -- and Gerard Dou so much celebrated of yore -- is most successfully followed. He avoids the broad humor of the Flemish school as much as possible, as not congenial to the refinement of modern taste, and aims rather at a true portraiture of nature in real, rustic life.
In the picture here presented he has delineated a scene of no rare occurrence in the dwelling of our native yeomenry. The whole is in admirable keeping. The furniture and decorations of the rooms, the costume and attitudes of the characters show perfectly the inside of a farmer's dwelling, and the business that occupies the group. The old clergyman appears to have just arrived, his saddlebags, hat and whip, lie on the chair near the door, the bride stands in all her rustic finery, rustic bloom and rustic bashfulness. The bride-groom's hand on her shoulder, seems intended to revive her courage, while the manner in which he grasps her hand is at once affectionate and awkward. The distress of the mother solaced by the father, who points to the younger daughter, as if indicating her as the successor to her sister's rank in the family, is well expressed. And the by-play at the door, which is opened by a servant girl to admit an old woman, the awkward affectation of grace and importance in the bride's-maid, whose attention seems to be attracted by what is passing between the young man and young woman on the other side of the room, all are full of life and true character of painting.
Mr. Krimmel's painting room, in Spruce street above Seventh, in Philadelphia, contains many admirable specimens in the same style. His country dance, Return from camp, Return from boarding school, &c. afford the amateur a rich and varied repast.