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Little journeys to the homes of great philosophers ...
Little journeys to the homes of great philosophers Author:Elbert Hubbard Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: HE man, Francois Marie Arouet,known to us as Voltaire, (which name he adopted in his twenty-first year) was born in Paris in 1694. He was the second son in a fam... more »ily of three children. During his babyhood he was very frail; in childhood sickly and weak, and throughout his whole life he suffered much from indigestion and insomnia. C( In all the realm of writers no man ever had a fuller and more active career, touching life at so many points, as Voltaire. The first requisite in a long and useful career would seem to be, have yourself born weak and cultivate dyspepsia, nervousness and insomnia. Whether or not the good die young is still a mooted question, but certainly the athletic often do. All those good men and true, who at grocery, tavern and railroad station eat hard-boiled eggs on a wager, and lift barrels of Sour with one hand, are carried to early graves, and over the grass-grown mounds that cover their dust, consumptive, dyspeptic and neurotic relatives, for twice or thrice a score of years, strew sweet myrtle, thyme andmignonette. Q Voltaire died of an accident—too much Four-o'Clock—cut off in his prime, when life for him was at its brightest and best, aged eighty-three. The only evidence we have that the mind of Voltaire failed at the last came from the Abbe Gaultier and the Cure of St. Sulpice. These good men arrived with a written retraction, which they desired Voltaire to sign. Waiting in the ante-room of the sick-chamber they sent in word that they wished to enter. "Assure them of my respect," said the stricken man. But the holy men were not to be thus turned away, so they entered. They approached the bedside, and the Cure of St. Sulpice said: "M. de Voltaire, your life is about to end. Do you acknowledge the divinity of Jesus Christ?" (J And the dying man stretched ...« less