OpenLLM-France/wikimedia huggingface dataset:
# Hermione and Her Little Group of Serious Thinkers/Proem (Introducing some of Hermione's Friends)

HERMIONE
PROEM
(Introducing some of Hermione's Friends)
I visited one night, of late, Thought's Underworld, the Brainstorm Slum, The land of Futile Piffledom; A salon weird where congregate Freak, Nut and Bug and Psychic Bum.
There, there, they sit and cerebrate: The fervid Pote who never potes, Great Artists, Male or She, that Talk But scorn the Pigment and the chalk, And Cubist sculptors wild as Goats. Theosophists and Swamis, too, Musicians mad as Hatters be— (E'en puzzled Hatters, two or three!) Tame Anarchists, a dreary crew, Squib Socialists too damp to sosh, Fake Hobohemians steeped in suds, Glib Females in Artistic Duds With Captive Husbands cowed and gauche.
I saw some Soul Mates side by side Who said their cute young Souls were pink; I saw a Genius on the Brink (Or so he said) of suicide. I saw a Playwright who had tried But couldn’t make the Public think; I saw a Novelist who cried, Reading his own Stuff, in his drink; I met a vapid egg-eyed Gink Who said eight times: "Art is my Bride!"
A Queen in sandals slammed the Pans And screamed a Chinese chant at us, The while a Hippopotamus Shook tables, book-shelves and divans With vast Terpsichorean fuss… Some Oriental kind of muss….
A rat-faced Idiot Boy who slimes White paper o’er with metric crimes— He is a kind of Burbling Blear Who warbles Sex Slush sad to hear And mocks God in his stolen rhymes And wears a ruby in one ear— Murmured to me: "My Golden Soul Drinks Song from out a Crystal Bowl…. Drinks Love and Song … my Golden Soul!" I let him live. There were no bricks,
Or even now that Golden Soul Were treading water in the Styx.
A Pallid Skirt—anæmic Wisp, As bloodless as a stick of chalk— Got busy with this line of talk: "The Sinner is Misunderstood! How can the Spirit enter in, Be blended with, the Truly Good Unless through Sympathy with Sin?"
"Phryne," I murmured, sad and low, "I pass the Buck—I do not know!"
Upon a mantel sat a Bust…. Some Hindu god, pug-faced and squat; A visage to inspire disgust…. Lord Bilk, the Deity of Rot…. Nay, surely, ’twas the great god Bunk, For when I wunk at it, it wunk!
I heard … I heard it proved that night That Fire is Cold, and Black is White, That Junk is Art, and Art is Junk, That Virtue's wrong, and Vice is right, That Death is Life, and Life is Death, That Breath is Rocks, and Rocks are Breath:—
The Cheap and easy paradox The Fool springs, hoping that it shocks….
Brain-sick, I stumbled to the street And drooled unto a kindly Cop: "Since moons have feathers on their feet, Why is your headgear perched on top? And if you scorn the Commonplace, Why wear a Nose upon your Face? And since Pythagoras is mute On Sex Hygiene and Cosmic Law, Is your Blonde Beast as Bland a Brute, As Blind a Brute, as Bernard Shaw? No doubt, when drilling through the parks, With Ibsen's Ghost and Old Doc Marx, You’ve often seen two Golden Souls Drink Suds and Sobs from Crystal Bowls?"
"I ain’t," he says, "I ain’t, Old Kid, And I would pinch ’em if I did!"
"Thank God," I said, "for this, at least: The world, in spots, is well policed!"
# Hermione and Her Little Group of Serious Thinkers/Symbols and Dew-Hopping

SYMBOLS AND DEW-HOPPING
LAST week the loveliest man lectured to us—to our Little Group of Advanced Thinkers, you know—on the Ultimate Symbolism. In art and life both, you know.
It was simply wonderful—wonderful!
Art, you know, used to be full of symbolism.
But now, it seems, symbolism has dropped out of Art, and Nature has taken it up.
Odd, isn't it? But really not surprising when you come to think about it.
For, you know, Nature is always trying to keep up with advanced ideas—evolving and evolving toward the Superman.
And the Superwoman, too.
I think it is the duty of us who are advanced thinkers to give Nature a worthy ideal to evolve toward, don't you?
To set Nature a mark to come up to, you know.
For what is the use of evolution if it doesn't evolve forward instead of backward?
And the Best People, I think, should feel a sense of social responsibility and give evolution a model. ​Each should be a Symbol—that's what I always ask myself each night now: "Have I been a Symbol today? Or have I failed to be a Symbol?"
Down at the beach last week I nearly drowned—you don't mean to say you hadn't heard of it? It was frightful.
I'd always heard that, when a person sinks, his whole past life passes before him in review.
But it didn't with me. What I said as I went down was: "Have I been a Symbol? Or have I failed?"
And the life guard who got me out—he was simply the most gorgeous man!—Burned bronze, you know, and with shoulders like a Greek god! and with the most wonderful eyes and white teeth—he asked me, the guard did, "What, marm?"
It was fearfully disappointing! Sometimes they are college men, you know, just life-guarding through the summer. But would any college man have said, "What, marm?"
And then he went and saved a blonde creature in the most scandalous bathing suit I ever saw.
He saved one in the most business-like way, too, as if he were a waiter, you know, passing from one table to another.
No wonder the social fabric is crumbling when quite impossible people like life guards permit them selves to become blasé over such matters!
​The lower classes are very discouraging anyhow, don't you think?—after all we do for them in the way of philanthropy and sociology and uplifting them generally, you know!
Of course, I haven't lost my interest in sociology—not by any means. I always hold fast the thought that all the world are brothers.
I'm taking up Dew-hopping next week. It's a wonderful new nerve cure. Formerly it was quite the thing to walk barefoot in the dew at dawn.
But at this new place I've discovered they don't merely walk—that's going out, quite. They hop. Like frogs and toads, you know.
It brings the patients into closer kinship with the electric currents of the earth, hopping does, the doctor says. It's wonderful!
He is the loveliest man—with mystic eyes!—the doctor is.
# Hermione and Her Little Group of Serious Thinkers/She Refuses to Give Up the Cosmos

SHE REFUSES TO GIVE UP THE COSMOS
WE'VE taken up Gertrude Stein—our Little Group of Serious Thinkers, you know—and she's wonderful; simply wonderful.
She Suggests the Inexpressible, you know.
Of course, she is a Pioneer. And with all Pioneers—don't you think—the Reach is greater than the Grasp.
Not that you can tell what she means.
But in the New Art, one doesn't have to mean things, does one? One strikes the chords, and the chords vibrate.
Aren't Vibrations just too perfectly lovely for anything?
The loveliest man talked to us the other night about World Movements and Cosmic Vibrations.
You see, every time the Cosmos vibrates it means a new World Movement.
And the Souls that are in Tune with the Cosmos are benefited by these World Movements. The other souls will get harm out of them.
Frightfully interesting, isn't it?—the Cosmos, I mean.
​I have given so much thought to it! It has become almost an obsession to me.
Only the other evening I was thinking about it. And without realizing that I spoke aloud I said, "I simply could not do without the Cosmos!"
Mamma—poor dear Mamma!—she is so terribly unadvanced, you know! Mamma said: "Hermione, I do not know what the Cosmos is. But this I do know—not another Sex Discussion or East Indian Swami will ever come into this house!"
"Mamma," I said to her, "I will not give up the Cosmos. It means everything to me; simply everything!"
I am always firm with Mamma; it is kinder, in the long run, to be quite positive. But what I suffer at home from objections to the advanced movements nobody knows!
Nobody but the Leaders of Thought can dream what Martyrdom is!
Sacrifice! Sacrifice! That is the keynote of the Liberal Life!
Nearly every night before I go to bed I ask myself: "Have I shown the Sacrificial Spirit to day? Or have I failed?"
# Hermione and Her Little Group of Serious Thinkers/Sincerity in the Home

SINCERITY IN THE HOME
SINCERITY should be the keynote of a life, don’t you think?
Sincerity — beauty — use — these are my watchwords.
I heard such an interesting talk on sincerity the other evening. I belong to a Little Group of Serious Thinkers who are taking up sincerity in all its phases this week.
We discussed Sincerity in the Home.
So many people's homes, you know, do not represent anything personal.
The sincere home should be full of purpose and personality—decorations, rugs, ornaments, hangings and all, you know.
The home shows the soul.
So I’m doing over our house from top to bottom, putting personality into it.
I’ve a room I call the Ancestors' Room.
You know, when one has ancestors, one's ancestral traditions keep one up to the mark, somehow. You know what I mean—blood will tell, and all that. Ancestors help one to be sincere.
So I've furnished my Ancestors' Room with all ​sorts of things to remind me of the dear dead-and-gone people I get my traditions from.
Heirlooms and portraits and things, you know.
Of course, all our own family heirlooms were destroyed in a fire years ago.
So I had to go to the antique shops for the portraits and furniture and chairs and snuff boxes and swords and fire irons and things.
I bought the loveliest old spinet—truly, a find!
I can sit down to it and imagine I am my own grandmother's grandmother, you know.
And it's wonderful to sit among those old heirlooms and feel the sense of my ancestors' personalities throbbing and pulsing all about me!
I feel, when I sit at the spinet, that my personality is truly represented by my surroundings at last.
I feel that I have at last achieved sincerity in the midst of my traditions.
And there’s a picture of the loveliest old lady… old-fashioned costume, you know, and all that… and the hair dressed in a very peculiar way….
Mamma says it’s a made-up picture—not really an antique at all—but I can just feel the personality vibrating from it.
I got it at a bargain, too.
I call her—the picture, you know—after an ancestress of mine who came to this country in the old Colonial days. ​With William the Conqueror, you know—or maybe it was William Penn. But it couldn't have been William Penn, could it? For she went to New Jersey—Orange, N. J. Was it William of Orange? More than likely…
Anyhow, I call the picture after her—Lady Clarissa, I call it. She married a commoner, as so many of the early settlers of this country did.
When I sit at the spinet and look at Lady Clarissa I often wonder what people do without family traditions.
And it's such a comfort to know I'm in a room that really represents my personality!
# Hermione and Her Little Group of Serious Thinkers/Soul Mates

SOUL MATES
I'M taking up Bergson this week. Next week I'm going to take up Etruscan vases and the Montessori system.
Oh, no, I haven't lost my interest in sociology.
Only the other night we went down in the auto and watched the bread line.
Of course, one can take up too many things.
It's the spirit in which you take a thing up that counts.
Sometimes I think the spirit in which you take a thing up counts more than the thing itself—counts in its effect on you, you know.
Of course, the way to get the real meaning out of any thing is to put yourself in a receptive attitude.
In serious things the attitude counts for every thing. One mustn't scoff.
If you look at it seriously and scientifically you ll see there's a great deal more than you suspected in all this affinity and soul mate craze, for instance.
Not that I care much for the words "soul mate" ​and "affinity" particularly; they have been so vulgarized, somehow.
The Best People don't use those terms any more.
Psychic harmony is the new term.
The loveliest man explained all about it to us the other day. I belong to a Little Group of Thinkers, who take a serious interest in these things, you know.
We are trying to find out how to make our psychic powers count for the betterment of the world. I am very psychic. Some are not.
This man had the most interesting eyes and the silkiest beard, and he said his aura was pink.
If he should meet a girl, you know, with an aura just the shade of pink that his aura is, why then they would know they were in psychic harmony.
Simple, isn't it? But then all truly great ideas are simple, aren't they?
But if his aura was blue, and her aura was yellow, then, of course, they would quarrel. That's what makes so much domestic unhappiness.
But he said something that gave me the most frightfully insecure feeling.
He said the aura changes its color as the soul progresses.
Two people may be in harmony today, and both have pink auras, and in a year hers may be green and his golden. ​What desperate chances a woman takes when she marries, doesn't she?
I sometimes think life must have been a much more comfortable thing before the world got to be so terribly advanced.
But, of course, it is our duty to sacrifice personal comfort for the future of the race and the betterment of the world.
As I was looking at the bread line the thought came to me that the chief difference between this advanced age and other ages was in the fact that people today are willing to take a serious interest in such things.
People are willing to sacrifice themselves today, you know.
It is food for optimism, don't you think?
Not that I was really so uncomfortable in the auto, you know. I had on my new mink coat.
# Hermione and Her Little Group of Serious Thinkers/Prison Reform and Poise

PRISON REFORM AND POISE
AREN'T you just crazy about prison reform? The most wonderful man talked to us—to our Little Group of Advanced Thinkers, you know—about it the other evening.
It made me feel that I'd be willing to do anything—simply anything!—to help those poor, unfortunate convicts. Collect money, you know, or give talks, or read books about them, or make any other sacrifice.
Even get them jobs. One ought to help them to start over again, you know.
Though as for hiring one of them myself, or rather getting Papa to—well, really, you know, one must draw the line somewhere!
But it's a perfectly fascinating subject to take up, prison reform is.
It gives one such a sense of brotherhood—and of service—it's so broadening, don't you think?—taking up things like that?
And one must be broad. I ask myself every night before I go to bed: "Have I been broad to day? Or have I failed?" ​Though, of course, one can be too broad, don't you think?
What I mean is, one must not be so broad that one loses one's poise in the midst of things.
Poise! That is what this age needs!
I suppose you've heard wide-brimmed hats are coming in again?
# Hermione and Her Little Group of Serious Thinkers/Stimulating Influences

STIMULATING INFLUENCES
SCIENCE and philanthropy should go hand in hand—two hearts that beat as one, if you know what I mean, and all that sort of thing.
And they do, too. We were discussing it the other evening—our Little Group of Serious Thinkers, you know—and we decided that what philanthropy owes to science is made up by what science owes to philanthropy.
Isn't it wonderful how things balance like that?
There's the Twilight Sleep and the Mother-Teacher Idea, for instance.
Our little group are thinking of starting a propaganda to urge all Teachers to be Mothers.
And, of course, a lot of them might object but along comes the Twilight Sleep and takes away all possible objections.
And along comes Philanthropy to put the Twilight Sleep within the reach of all—at least, we hope it will—and we're going to take the matter up with some of the Philanthropists right away.
Isn't it just simply wonderful how Modern Thought brings subjects like that together? ​Of course, even Modern Thought couldn't do it, unless the subjects belonged together, anyhow, could it? Unless they were—er—er——
Well, you know, Affinities. Though I don't care much for the word.
Affinities have quite gone out, you know. You don't hear much about Affinities this autumn.
Nor Soul Mates, either, for that matter.
Though I always will say there's an Idea behind all the talk about them.
Isn't it odd about things that way—how Ideas come and go, you know, and become quite old-fashioned, and yet all the time have a quite profound Idea back of them?
There's Cubist and Futurist Art, for instance—one doesn't hear nearly so much about them now, though everyone admitted there was an Idea behind them.
Of course, no one knew what the Idea meant.
But it was stimulating.
And why should an Idea have to mean anything if it is Stimulating?
Stimulation! Stimulation! That is the secret of Modern Life!
One should be receptive to Stimulation–one should strive to Stimulate!
One owes it to the Masses to Stimulate! It is the duty of the leaders of Advanced Thought! ​Nearly every night before I go to bed I ask myself, "Have I been a Stimulating Influence today? Or have I failed?"
Fothergil Finch says I Stimulate him!
Poor, dear man!—he's becoming quite—quite—well, er—er—too encouraged, if you know what I mean.
Yes, that is the way with poets.
I doubt if any poet ever understood a purely Platonic Friendship.
I gave him a long, long look last evening and said, "Fothergil, can you keep on the Platonic Plane?"
He only said, "Alas! The Platonic Plane!"
I hope he can. I need him for my Salon.
I'm having the entire ground floor of the house done over for that, you know, and I may reopen it any time now!
# History of Iowa From the Earliest Times to the Beginning of the Twentieth Century/4/John McKean

​ JOHN McKEAN is a native of the State of Pennsylvania, born in Lawrence County on the 19th of July, 1835. He was an infant when his father removed to Ohio and located on a farm where the boy received his early education. Later he attended New Richmond College. In 1854 John and a brother came to Iowa in an emigrant wagon, taking a claim at Scotch Grove in Jones County, where they opened a farm. He read law at Anamosa in Jones County, was admitted to the bar and there began to practice. In 1865 he was elected to the House of the Eleventh General Assembly serving two terms, after which he was promoted to the Senate where he served in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth General Assemblies. Mr. McKean was an able and influential legislator and did good service for the Agricultural College and the State University; for six years he was a regent of the latter. He secured the establishment of an additional penitentiary at Anamosa. In 1872 he was elected judge of the Circuit Court, where he remained for many years.
# History of Iowa From the Earliest Times to the Beginning of the Twentieth Century/4/John N. Dixon

​ JOHN N. DIXON was born in Fayette County, Pennsylvania, February 20, 1821. His education was acquired at Friends Academy, Mount Pleasant, Ohio, and continued by a classical course in a college at Athens. After graduation he returned to the farm and gave special attention to horticulture. In 1855 he removed to Mahaska County, Iowa, where he planted what was then the largest orchard in the State. He became a prominent member of the State Horticultural Society, making valuable practical contributions to its literature, founded upon his experimental work. In 1869 he was elected on the Republican ticket to the State Senate, serving in the Thirteenth General Assembly. He was for several years a ​trustee of the Iowa Agricultural College. He discovered a remedy for the ravages of the “curculio” for which he was awarded a prize by the State Horticultural Society. He died in December, 1883.
# History of Iowa From the Earliest Times to the Beginning of the Twentieth Century/4/John Q. Tufts

​ JOHN Q. TUFTS was born at Aurora, Indiana, July 12, 1840. His father removed to Iowa in 1852, taking up his residence in Cedar County near Wilton. The son was educated at Cornell College, Mount Vernon. He was elected on the Republican ticket to the House of Representatives of the Twelfth General Assembly, serving three terms by reëlections. In 1874 he was elected to Congress on the Republican ticket, serving but one term.
# History of Iowa From the Earliest Times to the Beginning of the Twentieth Century/4/John Meyer

​ JOHN MEYER was born in Clinton County, Pennsylvania, February 26, 1824. He was a graduate of Oberlin College and for two years was an instructor in the institution. In April, 1857, he located at Newton, Iowa, which became his permanent home. In August, 1862, he was commissioned captain in Company K, Twenty-eighth Iowa Volunteers, serving three years in the Union Army, attaining the rank of lieutenant-colonel. He was engaged in the battles of Champion's Hill, siege of Vicksburg, Winchester, Fisher's Hill and Cedar Creek. Mr. Meyer had served in the House of Representatives of the Ninth General Assembly, both in the regular and extra sessions, and after the close of the war in the fall of 1865 was elected to the Senate, serving in the Eleventh and Twelfth General Assemblies. In 1877 he was again elected to the Senate, serving through the Seventeenth and Eighteenth General Assemblies. For many years he was a trustee of Iowa College at Grinnell. He died on the 14th of May, 1902.
# History of Iowa From the Earliest Times to the Beginning of the Twentieth Century/4/John N. Baldwin

* [ 13 ]JOHN N. BALDWIN is a native of Council Bluffs, and the son of Judge Caleb Baldwin. He was born July 9, 1857, and received a thorough
* education in the public schools of his native city. He entered the Law Department of the State University and graduated with high honors at the age of twenty, in the class of 1877. Mr. Baldwin began the practice of his profession in Council Bluffs and has become one of the most successful corporation attorneys west of Chicago. In 1894 Mr. Baldwin was President of the Republican State Convention and delivered an able and eloquent address. He was chosen by the friends of Senator Allison to present his name for President before the National Republican Convention at St. Louis in 1896, by which he became known as a public speaker of unusual ability. In 1890 he was one of the presidential electors at large on the Republican ticket.
# History of Iowa From the Earliest Times to the Beginning of the Twentieth Century/4/John N. W. Rumple

​ JOHN N. W. RUMPLE was born near Fostoria, Ohio, March 4, 1841. In 1853 he came to Iowa in an emigrant wagon, taking up his residence on a farm near Geneva Bluffs, Iowa County. He attended the district school and in 1857 entered Ashland Academy in Wapello County. Later he continued his studies in Western College and the Normal Department of the State University, teaching meanwhile to defray his expenses in college. In 1861 he enlisted in Company H, Second Iowa Cavalry as a private, remaining in the service until 1865 when he was mustered out a ​captain. He participated in the battles of Island Number Ten, New Madrid, Corinth, Iuka, Grierson's Raid, Tupelo, Nashville and many minor engagements. Returning from the army Captain Rumple entered the law office of Hon. H. M. Martin of Marengo and was admitted to the bar in 1867. He was elected to the State Senate of the adjourned session of 1873, and served by reëlections in the Fifteenth, Sixteenth and Seventeenth General Assemblies. For six years he was a member of the Board of Regents of the State University and was also one of the curators of the State Historical Society. In 1900 he was elected Representative in Congress from the Second District and declined reëlection on account of failing health. He died in Chicago in January, 1903.