This Simian World

On a mild Sunday afternoon, thousands stroll up and down Broadway, staring at one another—and Potter sees vermin. His companion offers a gentler explanation: this is, after all, a simian civilization.

In Clarence Day’s wry early-twentieth-century meditation, the narrator and Potter look at human life through the eyes of amused, sometimes exasperated observers. If our ancestors were apes and monkeys, the narrator suggests, why expect us to behave like eagles? From apartment-house crowds to the disciplined, industrious ants, each comparison turns familiar ideas about progress, work, property and civilization a little askew. Human beings may have great possibilities, but our inheritance comes with curious limitations—and reason, the narrator suspects, may be less our master than instinct’s clever servant. What else might our animal cousins reveal about the creatures we call human?

With centuries of literature, it's inevitable that some will fall through the cracks. We hunt down public domain works and restore them so they're not lost to the world.

Who are we? We're Cairn Press. Our background is in design, publishing, typography, and technology. These skills fuel our mission to create the highest quality Public Domain eBooks available online, at an affordable price. We give them the treatment they deserve; our proprietary process restores books for a better overall user experience in design, readability, and e-reader compatibility.