The Valley of Shadows: MEMORIES OF LINCOLN'S COUNTRY
(Mysticism father writes a wonderful book worth highlighti...)
Mysticism father writes a wonderful book worth highlighting with your Kindle!
In this book Mr Grierson recalls in vivid memories
the wonderful romance of his life in Lincoln's country
before the war. " The Valley of the Shadows is not a
novel," says Mr W. L. Courtney in the Daily Tele-
graph " yet in the graphic portraiture of spiritual and
intellectual movements it possesses an attraction denied
to all but the most significant kind of fiction. . . .
With a wonderful touch Mr Grierson depicts scene
after scene, drawing the simple, native characters with
bold, impressive strokes."
(This book was originally published prior to 1923, and rep...)
This book was originally published prior to 1923, and represents a reproduction of an important historical work, maintaining the same format as the original work. While some publishers have opted to apply OCR (optical character recognition) technology to the process, we believe this leads to sub-optimal results (frequent typographical errors, strange characters and confusing formatting) and does not adequately preserve the historical character of the original artifact. We believe this work is culturally important in its original archival form. While we strive to adequately clean and digitally enhance the original work, there are occasionally instances where imperfections such as blurred or missing pages, poor pictures or errant marks may have been introduced due to either the quality of the original work or the scanning process itself. Despite these occasional imperfections, we have brought it back into print as part of our ongoing global book preservation commitment, providing customers with access to the best possible historical reprints. We appreciate your understanding of these occasional imperfections, and sincerely hope you enjoy seeing the book in a format as close as possible to that intended by the original publisher.
(Fabulous book from an expert on Mysticism! Contents Inclu...)
Fabulous book from an expert on Mysticism! Contents Include the following Chapters:
THE CELTIC TEMPERAMENT
STYLE AND PERSONALITY
HEBRAIC INSPIRATION
PRACTICAL PESSIMISM
OMAR AND IMMORTALITY
EMERSON AND UNITARIANISM
THEATRICAL AUDIENCES
THE SPIRIT OF THE MUSIC-HALL
THE ABBE JOSEPH ROUX
PORTRAITS AND IMPRESSIONS
THE CONSERVATION OF ENERGY
THE PSYCHIC ACTION OF GENIUS
REFLECTIONS
The Invincible Alliance: And Other Essays, Political, Social, and Literary (Classic Reprint)
(Excerpt from The Invincible Alliance: And Other Essays, P...)
Excerpt from The Invincible Alliance: And Other Essays, Political, Social, and Literary
My escort led the way upstairs to the Chinese museum. When we arrived among the splendid Objects which filled a great gallery, he said again, with a wave Of the hand: There is something worth fighting for, meaning the Chinese Empire. Then I began to realise what the Eastern question meant for the people of Russia. But when we entered the throne room Of Catherine the Great, with its maze Of mellow light, its wonderful calm, and its fascinating simplicity, all this, united to something singularly Oriental, made me realise how unnatural Russian dominion is in Western Europe, and how much in harmony it is with Eastern thought and religion.
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These messages were begun in September, 1920, and the l...)
These messages were begun in September, 1920, and the last was recorded in May, 1921. I little dreamed that many of the predictions set forth would be verified so soon. For names, in themselves, count for nothing. The subliminal mind may assume different names on different occasions. A message is of value exactly in proportion to the information imparted.
The first communication from General Grant was recorded September ninth. It is peremptory in tone, and contains a warning touching the insecurity of the Panama Canal. In November Mr. Harding made a tour of inspection and found the fortifications of the Canal inadequate. I then decided on the publication of these messages.
They deal with the actual. Take, for example, John Marshall’s documents, which are filled with warnings no reader with intelligence will attempt to refute, Disraeli’s indictment of English statesmanship in recent times, Lincoln’s utterances on affairs in Europe and Mexico, General Grant on Preparation, Benjamin Franklin on the Privilege of Liberty, Bishop Phillips Brooks on the Coming Ordeals, to name but a few.
As a Judge sums up, regardless of who may or may not agree, a decision is rendered according to the vision of the one who delivers the message. Principle, not Party, is the basis of judgment.
Witness Disraeli’s remark that the blunders committed by the British Parliament would have been impossible in an Irish Parliament in Dublin. In a series of articles in “Nash’s Magazine” Mr. Basil King suggests that “the means of communication with the plane next above us may be through the everlasting doors which the subliminal opens upward. Through these doors the mind may go up and out; through these doors the light may come in and down.”
In our group of investigators we have had the perseverence essential for serious development, and, as in all demonstrations, whether physical or psychical, everything depends on conditions, so we have had periods of weeks when no message of any kind was received.
A striking feature of these communications is their freedom from restraint imposed by popular opinion. They contain neither theories nor appeals. Warnings are uttered concerning events and their inevitable reactions.
The psycho-phonic waves, by which the messages are imparted, are as definite as those received by wireless methods.
FRANCIS GRIERSON.
Los Angeles, California
“To Francis Grierson belongs the honor of having first attained to prophetic vision of the common goal. In his first volume, published in Paris in 1889, he suggested every idea which since then has become recognized as essential not only to Bergson and Maeterlinck but to the constantly increasing number of writers engaged in making the time conscious of its own spirit. As we read essay after essay it is as if we beheld the globe of life revolving slowly between us and some unknown source of light.” -Edwin Bjorkman, "Voices of Tomorrow"
“He presents a unique combination of thinker, writer, artist and musician who owes nothing to any school or any master or system of training; and his experience is without a parallel in the intellectual world of our day.” -Current Opinion
"My own experiences as a student in this sphere of psychic research in Europe and America, covering a period of thirty years, convince me that we have here a revelation of a new mode of spiritual communication unlike anything heretofore given to the world, not only different in quality but different in purpose." -Lawrence Waldemar Tonner
The Rhythm of Life. With Foreword by Francis Grierson
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About the Book
Biographical books, or bios, are detaile...)
About the Book
Biographical books, or bios, are detailed descriptions of a person's life. A biography is more than simply the basic facts, like education, work, relationships, and death. It portrays a person's experience of major life events. A biography presents a subject's life story, emphasizing certain aspects of his or her life, and including intimate details of their experiences, which may include an analysis of their personality. Biographical works are generally non-fiction, but fictional works can also be used to portray a person's life. An in-depth form of biographical coverage is referred to as legacy writing. An authorized biography refers to a book written with the permission, cooperation, and at times, participation of the subject or the subject's heirs. An autobiography, on the other hand, is written by the person themselves, sometimes with the assistance of a collaborator or “ghostwriter”.
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Benjamin Henry Jesse Francis Shepard was a composer, pianist, and writer who used the pen name of Francis Grierson.
Background
Benjamin Henry Jesse Francis Shepard was born on September 18, 1848 in Birkenhead, Cheshire, and six months later his father emigrated with his family to America, where he became an American citizen, settled in a log-cabin on the Illinois prairie, and later moved to Alton.
His father, Joseph Shepard of Wicklow, Ireland, was descended from an old Cumberland family to which Thomas Shepard, the founder of Harvard College, belonged. His mother, Emily (Grierson) Shepard, traced her lineage through Robert Grierson, the original of Scott’s “Redgauntlet, ” to Gregor, founder of the Clan MacGregor in the ninth century, and was closely related to Lord Wolseley, Sir James Moncrieff Grierson, and Gen. Benjamin Henry Grierson, the Union cavalry officer.
Career
The stirring period just before the Civil War made on young Francis an indelible impression, to be recorded fifty years later in The Valley of Shadows, with accurate recollection of events, characters, and even local dialect. In 1859 his family moved to St. Louis, where in 1861 the boy served as a page on Gen. Frémont’s staff.
In 1863 his family moved to Niagara Falls, and six years later the youth of twenty-one struck out alone and almost penniless for Paris.
With only two years of musical training, he had already, at seventeen, given professional recitals on the piano and had developed remarkable powers of improvisation.
Unaided by letters of introduction, he succeeded at once in gaining the interest of Auber, director of the Conservatoire, who was much impressed with his talent.
Grierson’s success was the more interesting in that he gave only private performances, save when he was specially invited to sing in Saint-Eustache, Notre Dame, the basilica at Montmartre, and, later, in the Cathedral of Baden, where he sang and played the organ at the same time. His trium phant course took him to London, thence to St. Petersburg, where he was a guest in the Imperial Palace, thence to Berlin, and again to Paris and London. Famous now in the most important European capitals, he rested to an extent upon his laurels, but never entirely abandoned his musical performances, giving them intermittently and with hardly abated power until the very day of his death.
Grierson’s even more important literary talent developed late. In the early eighties he was back in America and published a series of essays in the Chicago Times. In 1884 he made another trip to Paris ; in 1886-88 he was living in San Diego, where certain art-loving citizens aided him to build the “Villa Montezuma, ” one of the landmarks of the town ; in 1889 he was back in Paris, publishing, still under the name of Jesse Shepard, his first book, La Révolte Idéaliste, which received letters of commendation from seven academicians, including Sully Prudhomme and Henry de Regnier, because of the purity of its French style and the beauty of its thought. Maurice Maeterlinck greeted the author’s mystical soul as "la plus vraiment fraternelle que j’aie trouvée jusqu’ici. ”
It was not until ten years later, however, that Grierson, changing his name so that his writing might not be considered the work of a mere musician, definitely settled down, in London, to a literary career. Thus his first book in English, Modern Mysticism and Other Essays (1899) did not appear until he was fifty years old. It was followed by The Celtic Temperament and Other Essays (1901). In these volumes Grierson showed himself master of an oracular yet lucid and rhythmical style, not a little influenced by the practise of the French Symbolists. He now devoted seven years to the writing of what proved to be his masterpiece, The Valley of Shadows; Recollections of the Lincoln Country 1858-63 (1909), an uneven but in parts marvellously vivid and beautiful account of the life and spirit of those years in the ominous shadow of the oncoming war. Here he wrote in a freer style which at its best attained an epic and prophetic quality.
As early as 1910 Grierson had pointed out in the New Age, to which with Arnold Bennett and H. G. Wells he was a chief contributor, the inevitableness of an approaching war with Germany, and in November 1913 he became so convinced of the nearness of the struggle that he returned, for the last time, to America. He now spent two years in New York, two on lecture tours, and two in Washington, D. C.
After a year in Toronto, and another year in New York, he moved to Los Angeles and settled there for the remainder of his life. His only production during this period was a pamphlet entitled Psycho-Phone Messages (1921), really a collection of imaginary utterances on contemporary affairs by various statesmen such as Jefferson, Hamilton, Webster, but generally considered, owing to ambiguous phraseology, to have made claims of Spiritualist mediumship.
He died while sitting at the piano during a recital, passing away quietly, after the closing piece of the evening, with his hands still resting on the keys. Flis last days were spent in extreme poverty.
Grierson was not a Spiritualist, but a philosophical mystic, finding his source of inspiration in an impersonal realm of Spirit accessible to the sub-conscious.
Personality
Tall and handsome, with Byronic features, “Jesse Shepard, ” once launched, quickly became the sensation of the day. His playing, weird and mystical, produced a profound effect upon all hearers. His large hands had the astounding span of an octave and a half, “and it is said that at certain wonderful moments, he could add the strangest, most inexplicable voice, that did not follow the music but went along with it, almost independent of it, rising up from out of the middle chords of the piano, faintly at first, and at last filling the room with indescribable and thrilling tones”.
Quotes from others about the person
Of this voice, which had a range of four octaves, Stephane Mallarmé said, “It is not a voice, it is a choir !” Of the musician he said, “For the first time in the history of music we now have the real poet of the piano. ”
Connections
Francis was never married but for the final forty-two years of his life was constantly attended by his faithful friend, Lawrence Waldemar Tonner, who acted as his secretary, manager, and personal representative.