The Young Man and the World

In Moscow, a cabdriver is said to look exactly like Tolstoy—and to possess none of the philosopher’s brightness. For Albert J. Beveridge, the resemblance is a warning: never try to seem more than you are.

In these early-20th-century essays, Beveridge addresses the young man facing the world of work, ambition, and expectation. Honesty, he argues, reaches far beyond keeping your hands off another’s money: it means knowing your own strengths, admitting your limits, and choosing work that fits you rather than a career chosen for its prestige. A mistaken calling can squander a life; too many new beginnings can leave a man with nothing begun. Yet Nature, as Beveridge sees it, sets limits—and gives each person a task. How do you discover yours, and find the resolve to stay with it?

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.