It is a cool and rainy morning in New York City, and Cheryl Petit de Mange wants a cup of coffee. Two big, bright Starbucks shops beckon from 200 yards in either direction. But Petit de Mange instead joins 14 other hardy java junkies crowded around what looks like a bright-orange ice cream truck. She’s waiting to buy a 12-ounce cappuccino for $2—$1.68 less than what she’d pay across the street. “It’s not just about price or better customer service,” yells Petit de Mange over the soul music blasting from the truck’s sound system.”Why would you go to Starbucks when you can support a neighborhood business like this?” She has just summed up how a pair of entrepreneurs, equipped with nothing more sophisticated than a refurbished electric-company truck, keep their coffee business percolating despite being sandwiched between two outlets of a popular and respected national chain.

Everything Mud founders Greg Northrop and Nina Berott do is designed to distinguish their business from Starbucks and other national brands. “My profit margins probably aren’t as great as Starbucks,” concedes Northrop, 40, who says he could make a “decent profit” if he weren’t putting so much of his earnings back into the business. Northrop wants to boost sales, which grew to $520,000 last year, up from $293,000 in 2002, the year he added a second truck now on Wall Street.

Excerpted from ‘Beat the Beast: Selling Price’ by Maggie Overfelt. Published in Forbes Small Business, September 2004.

That innocence is the receptacle of all heavenly good things, and therefore that the innocence of Little Children is the plane or ground of all their affections for good and truth, may appear from what has been said before … The innocence of Children was imaged to me by the representation of a Child in wood with scarce any thing of life in it, but which was vivified gradually, answerably to the progress of Children in their knowledge of truth, and their affection for good: and afterwards I had a representation of genuine innocence in a very beautiful Child quite lively and naked: for the innocents which are in the inmost Heaven, and such nearest to the Lord, appear as Little Children … In a word, the more the Angels excel in wisdom, the higher is their degree of innocence; and the higher their degree of innocence, the more do they appear to one another as Little Children: hence it is that Infancy in the Word signifies innocence.

Excerpted from A Treatise Concerning Heaven and Hell, and of the Wonderful Things Therein by Emanuel Swedenborg. Translated from the original Latin and published in the second edition by R. Hindmarsh, London, 1784.

When the Franciscans were asked, in 1859, to make a foundation in Quincy, it was expressly stipulated that, besides engaging in parish work, they would open a high school for boys and young men. There was, indeed, urgent need of a Catholic high school and college in this part of the state, but owing to the scarcity of priests and religious, it was a matter of extreme difficulty, if not an impossibility, to obtain Catholic educators for such an institution. In these circumstances, the pioneer Franciscans, with characteristic zeal and energy, determined to accept the invitation of Rt. Rev. Bishop Juncker to supply the deficiency.

The arrival of Father Servatius Altmicks and his companions in Quincy and the beginning of their foundation, has already been told. As soon as the friars had taken up their abode in the Mast House, as the end of December, 1859, the set aside the first floor for the purposes of the high school which they planned to open as soon as possible. This undertaking in the interest of education was attended with many difficulties. The Fathers were few in number, hampered by the lack of resources, and besides engaged in pastoral work. At this distant date, it is indeed a cause of wonderment that they succeeded so well in the face of so many difficulties; one cannot but admire the zeal and courage of these pioneers. It was naturally impossible under the circumstances, to begin with a complete course. The main point was to make a beginning; the course could be extended and perfected later as reinforcements would arrive from Germany and the conditions in the mission would improve. This was the opinion of Bishop Juncker, the Rev. H. Schaefermeyer, and of the Catholics of Quincy. Accordingly, the Fathers resolutely set to work, and early in the year 1860, probably in March, they were in a position to receive the first students.

Excerpted from ‘The Franciscans in Southern Illinois’ by the Rev. Silas Barth, O.F.M. Originally appearing in Illinois Catholic Historical Review, Volume III. Published by the Illinois Catholic Historical Society, Chicago, 1920.

Lake Winnipesaukee is about thirty miles long and varies from one to ten miles in width. The lake is almost five hundred feet above the sea level and the water is very clear and pure. Winnipesaukee has an area of seventy-one square miles, exclusive of two hundred and seventy-four islands, ten of which have an area of more than one hundred acres each …

The fishing in Lake Winnipesaukee is unsurpassed in New England, all things considered. The state fish and game commissioners are stocking its waters with land locked salmon, and already many specimens of gamy fish have been taken weighing from seven to twelve pounds each. Lake trout are very numerous and afford good sport both summer and winter. It is no uncommon thing for one row boat to bring in fifteen or twenty trout weighing from three to ten pounds each as the result of one day’s trolling during the spring months. In the summer, black bass, pickerel, perch and other excellent food fish are taken in immense numbers.

Excerpted from ‘Laconia, the City on the Lakes’ by Charles W. Vaughan, originally appearing in National Magazine as edited by Joe Mitchell Chapple, published by Chapple Publishing Company, Ltd., Boston, 1902.

A market-place for the accommodation of the butchers and the country-people was anciently under the trees in front of the fort, near the corner of Water and Whitehall streets. As the city enlarged, the market-places were removed to the east and north, first at the foot of Broad street, then to Coenties Slip, and subsequently to Old Slip, and to the Vlie, (a Dutch word, indicating a valley – a rural spot, formed by a river which formerly run up Maiden Lane,) or Fly Market, foot of Maiden Lane, and to Fulton and Catherine streets.

The market-houses of this city are now judiciously distributed in various quarters of the town, to suit the wants and convenience of the citizens; the two principal ones being situated close to the water, one on the Hudson and one on the East river, at the extremity of Fulton street on each side, and adjacent to the two most important ferries, which render them very accessible to the country-people and fishermen.

Excerpted from The Stranger’s Hand-Book for the City of New York; or, What to See, and How to See It. Published by C.S. Francis and Co., New York, 1854.

Early that evening while Chaumonot, worn with travelling and overcome with sleep, threw himself to rest on a bed that was not made up since the creation of the world. Father Brebeuf, to escape for a time the acrid and pungent smoke that filled the cabin, went out to commune with God alone in prayer. Early as it was, there was no one moving around, for the night was bitterly cold, and every door was closed. As the priest passed through the bourg, flickering ribands of light gleamed across his path,-from out the lodges came laughter and sounds of boisterous merriment, for neighbors were telling to each other rude jokes and spicy stories. Brebeuf moved towards the margin of the woods, when presently he stopped as if transfixed. Far away to the south-east, high in air and boldly outlined, a huge cross floated; Suspended in mid-heaven. “Was it stationary?” No, it moved towards him from the land of the Iroquois. The saintly face lighted with unwonted splendor, for his saw in the vision the presage of the martyr’s crown.

Excerpted from Early Missions in Western Canada by the Very Rev. W.R. Harris, Dean of St. Catharines. Published by Hunter, Rose and Company, Toronto, 1893.

But all of a sudden I realized that he knew also, just like I knew. And that everybody in the bookstore knew, and that they were all hiding it! They all had the consciousness, it was like a great unconscious that was running between all of use that everybody was completely conscious, but that the fixed expressions that people have, the habitual expressions, the manners, the mode of talk, are all masks hiding this consciousness. But almost at that moment it seemed that it would be too terrible if we communicated to each other on a level of total consciousness and awareness each of the other—that it would be too terrible, it would be the end of the bookstore, it would be the end of civ- … not civilization, but in other words the position that everybody was in was ridiculous, everybody running around peddling books to each other. Here in the universe! Passing money over the counter, wrapping books in bags and guarding the door, you know, stealing books, and the people sitting up making accountings on the upper floor there, and people worrying about their exams walking through the bookstore, and all the millions of thoughts that people had – you know, that I’m worrying about – whether I’m going to get laid or whether anybody loves them, about their mothers dying of cancer or, you know, the complete death awareness that everybody has continuously with them all the time – suddenly revealed to me at once in the faces of the people, and they all looked like horrible grotesque masks, grotesque because hiding the knowledge from each other. Having a habitual conduct and forms to prescribe, forms to fulfill. Roles to play. But the main insight I had at the time was that everybody knew. Everybody knew completely everything. Knew completely everything in the terms I was talking about.

Excerpted from the interview ‘On the Blake Experience’ appearing in On the Poetry of Allen Ginsburg, edited by Lewis Hyde. Published by the University of Michigan, 1984.

These were spread out upon the sand, and an more brilliant piscatorial picture I never saw before, but such variety and beauty in a fish market I saw again and again in the markets of the Windward Islands. The fish were of all shapes and sizes, from a hideous shark to the graceful and beautiful bonita. There were the parrot-fish, a gray-blue and yellow fish that looked like a drowned “Polly,” with watery eye; the gar-fish, two feet long, as slender as a lance-blade, clothed in gleaming silver, and with a long black bill like a bird’s, which is set with rows of fine pointed teeth; there was the butter fish, and the redsnapper, and the gauze-winged flying fish, and the beautiful angel fish, with its delicate arrangements of scales of pearl and silver and bronze and gold. Curious eels of vast size lay coiled like serpents in boxes … and crabs of all sizes and colors, and forty other strange and wonderful dwellers in the sea. Dozens of men and women, squatting or kneeling in the sand, were chaffering and chattering, and handling and weighing, and selling and buying.

Excerpted from Cruising Among the Caribbees: Summer Days in Winter Months by Charles Augustus Stoddard. Published by Charles Scribner & Sons, New York, 1895.

Now, what I am going to say is almost unintelligible, but I shall say it all the same, because it responds to a true sensation. These marionettes are like the Egyptian hieroglyphics, that is, they have a certain pure and mysterious quality, and when they perform a drama of Shakespeare or Aristophanes I see to watch the poet’s thought unfolded in sacred characters along the temple’s wall.

In short, I venerate their divine innocence, and I am very sure that if old Æschyulus, who was highly mystical, had returned to Earth and visited France on the occasion of our Universal Exhibition, he would have had his tragedies played by M. Signoret’s company.

I wanted to say these things, because, without flattering myself, I do not believe that anyone else would say them, and I strongly suspect my folly to be unique. The marionettes respond exactly to my idea of the theatre, and I confess that this idea is singular. I should like a dramatic representation to recall, in some degree, so that it may truly remain a game, a box of Nuremberg toys, a Noah’s ark, or a set of clockwork figures. But I should further desire these artless images to be symbols; I should like these simple forms to be animated by magic; I want them to be enchanted toys. This may seem a curious taste; still, it must be remembered that Shakespeare and Sophocles satisfy it well enough.

Excerpted from On Life & Letters by Anatole France. Translation by D.B. Stewart. Published by the John Lane Company, New York, 1922.

My invention has for its object to provide an efficient means for producing candy cotton and which is so constructed that carbonization of the sugar used in the formation of the candy will be entirely eliminated and the revolving cotton forming member may be rotated at an exceedingly high speed without danger of fracture of the member. The invention also provides a means for making electoral connection with the heater located in the rotatable member and for the regulating the supply of current through the electric motor that rotates the rotatable member and the heater located in the rotatable member.

The invention may be contained in structures that vary in their details and, to illustrate a practical application of the invention, I have selected a structure containing the invention as an example of the various forms of structures that embody the invention …

The candy cotton machine has a pedestal … that is provided with a relatively larger base … in which is located the electric motor … that is connected to the porcelained sheet metal spinner … by means of a spindle … and plate.

Excerpted from U.S. patent 1,806,111, ‘Cotton Candy Forming Machine,’ by Buren Moad. Application filed September 10, 1929, patented May 19, 1931.

All history should be the history of the people. It is what the people are doing in villages, communities and families, that lie at the foundation of national character, and sentiment, and consequently of national events. Those matters which possess a natural interest to a particular neighborhood, from association with the familiar names and places, are of interest to everyone who seeks in the experience of the past for that wisdom that may be desired from a knowledge of what those who lived before us have done and suffered …

The historic genealogy of a village may be made as useful a guide through the devious paths of life as the chart of the mariner to him who sails among the breakers of the great deep, pointing out the track that others have pursued, and showing where and how they have advanced in safety, and also wherein they have becomes victims of passion, folly and recklessness.

Excerpted from The History of Canaan, New Hampshire by William Allen Wallace and James Burns Wallace. Published by the Rumford Press, Concord, New Hampshire, 1910.

Some people to-day declare loudly against the influence of heredity and environment, saying the innate good of a child will conquer everything. It will under the right cultivation and conscious individual effort, after the child is old enough to realize and throw off the shackles of childhood mistraining. But it is is seldom done, because the mistakes have been woven into every fiber of his being—mental, moral, and physical. Throughout life the pains and pleasures of childhood are remembered with a keenness that makes it impossible for them to be otherwise than potent factors for good or evil in the character-building process.

A man, noted for his kindness to every one about him, once said to me: “A smile influenced me more than anything else for good … The one longing of my life was for love. One day a stranger met me in the street, a man who saw that I was an unhappy child. He held out his hand to me and smiled kindly. I never forgot it. It was the beginning of my effort to be kind to everybody. It made me whatever I am, and I can say truly that love does everything when we let it.”

Excerpted from ‘The Family Circle’ by Florence Peltier Perry and the Rev. Helen Van-Anderson, originally appearing in Mind, volume IX. Published by the Alliance Publishing Company, New York, October 1901.

Of the nature of his present trade, and of the class of his customers, I had the following account from a man of twelve years’ experience in the vending of street jewelry :—

“It’s not very easy to tell, sir,” he said, “what sells best, for people seem to suspect everything, and seems to think they’re done if they give 3d for an agate brooch, and finds out it aint set in gold. I think agate is about the best part of the trade now. It seems a stone is easy imitated. Cornelians, too, aint so bad in brooches—people likes the color; but not what they was, and not up to agates. But nothing is up to what it once was; not in the least. Sell twice as much—when you can, which often stands over till to-morrow come-never—and get half the profit. I don’t expect very much from the Great Exhibition. They send goods so cheap from Germany, they’ll think any thing dear in London, if it’s only at German prices. I think it’s a mistake to fancy that the cheaper a jewelry article is the more you’ll sell of it. You won’t. People’s of opinion—at least that’s my notion of it—that it’s so common everybody’ll have it, and so they won’t touch it. It’s Thames water, sire, against beer, is poor low-priced jewelry, against tidy and fair-priced; but then the low-priced but then the low-priced has now ruined the other sorts, for they’re all thought to go under the same umbrella,—all of a sort; 1s. or 1d. Why, as to who’s the best customers, that depends on where you pitches your pitch, or works your round, and whether you are known, or are merely an upstart.

Excerpted from London Labour and the London Poor, Vol. I, The London Street-Folk by Henry Mayhew. Published by Harper & Brothers, New York, 1851.

It is precisely to distract attention from its theoretically inert landlords and capitalists that neoclassical economics complicates its initial story and introduces another character into the drama: the entrepreneur. Here is an economic actor par excellence. The entrepreneur sees an opportunity, rushes to take advantage of it, thereby benefitting not only himself but society at large. The entrepreneur develops a new product, invents a new technology, comes up with a new and more efficient way of producing or marketing. Or, more modestly, he replicates in a new location what others have done elsewhere—develops a new strip mall, opens another coffee shop or dollar store or fast food restaurant. The entrepreneur is the creative principle of capitalism, celebrated, emulated, envied. Surely no one will deny that the entrepreneur makes a positive contribution to society—and hence is deserving of his reward.

No one can doubt that the entrepreneur makes a positive contribution. One can question the long-range value of specific contributions but any society, if its to be at all dynamic, needs people who are economically creative and willing to initiate new projects. Entrepreneurial activity is vital—for capitalism and for successor-system socialism. Socialism will need entrepreneurs (though not capitalists).

Excerpted from After Capitalism by David Schweickart. Published by Rowman & Littlefield, Lanham, Maryland, 2002.