[Gutenberg 44955] • A short history of Rhode Island

This book is an illustrated version of the original A Short History of Rhode Island by George Washington Greene. “If with the philosopher history reveals the laws of life, with the poet she recalls the past and stirs human sympathies in their profoundest depths. Man follows man on her checkered stage; nations rise and fall; mysteries enchain us; imagination controls us; reason guides us; conscience admonishes and warns; and first and foremost of all our stimulants to action is our sympathy with our fellow-man. I have attempted in the following pages to tell what the part of Rhode Island has been in this great drama. A talent was entrusted to her. Did she wrap it in a napkin? To those who are familiar with the accurate and exhaustive work of Governor Arnold, it will be needless to say that but for the aid of his volumes, mine would never have been written.”