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Historia Calamitatum

Creator: Abelard, Peter, 1079-1142
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HISTORIA CALAMITATUM THE STORY OF MY MISFORTUNES An Autobiography by Peter Abelard Translated by Henry Adams Bellows Introduction by Ralph Adams Cram INTRODUCTION The "Historia Calamitatum" of Peter Abelard is one of those human documents, out of the very heart of the Middle Ages, that illuminates by the glow of its ardour a shadowy period that has been made even more dusky and incomprehensible by unsympathetic commentators and the ill-digested matter of "source-books." Like the "Confessions" of St. Augustine it is an authentic revelation of personality and, like the latter, it seems to show how unchangeable is man, how consistent unto himself whether he is of the sixth century or the twelfth--or indeed of the twentieth century. "Evolution" may change the flora and fauna of the world, or modify its physical forms, but man is always the same and the unrolling of
Tom Swift and His Electric Runabout, or, the Speediest Car on the Road

Tom Swift and His Electric Runabout CONTENTS CHAPTER I TOM HOPES FOR A PRIZE II MR. DAMON'S STEERING III THE MOTOR-CYCLE WINS IV TALE OF A NEW BANK V A MIDNIGHT ENCOUNTER VI BUILDING THE CAR VII TOM IS CAPTURED VIII A BLINDING FLASH IX TOM IS RESCUED
the centuries affects him not at all. If we can assume the vivid personality, the enormous intellectual power and the clear, keen mentality of Abelard and his contemporaries and immediate successors, there is no reason why "The Story of My Misfortunes" should not have been written within the last decade. They are large assumptions, for this is not a period in world history when the informing energy of life expresses itself through such qualities, whereas the twelfth century was of precisely this nature. The antecedent hundred years had seen the recovery from the barbarism that engulfed Western Europe after the fall of Rome, and the generation of those vital forces that for two centuries were to infuse society with a vigour almost unexampled in its potency and in the things it brought to pass. The parabolic curve that describes the trajectory of Mediaevalism was then emergent out of "chaos and old night" and Abelard and his opponent, St. Bernard, rode high on the mounting force in its swift and almost violent ascent. Pierre du Pallet, yclept Abelard, was born in 1079 and died in 1142, and his life precisely covers the period of the birth, development and perfecting of that Gothic style of architecture which is one of the great exemplars of the period. Actually, the Norman development occupied the years from 1050 to 1125 while the initiating and determining of Gothic consumed only fifteen years,