The Senator Michele Pignaver, being a childless widower of several years' standing and a personage of wealth and worth in Venice, made up his mind one day that he would marry his niece Ortensia, as soon as her education was completed. For he was a man of culture and of refined tastes, fond of music,... Read More

The houses were dark in the August night and the perspective of Beacon Street, with its double chain of lamps, was a foreshortened desert. The club on the hill alone, from its semi-cylindrical front, projected a glow upon the dusky vagueness of the Common, and as I passed it I heard in the hot stillness... Read More

One Wednesday afternoon in late September, Ann Veronica Stanley came down from London in a state of solemn excitement and quite resolved to have things out with her father that very evening. She had trembled on the verge of such a resolution before, but this time quite definitely she made it. A crisis had been... Read More

Well, my dears, here is what you have asked for: another "Oz Book" about Dorothy's strange adventures. Toto is in this story, because you wanted him to be there, and many other characters which you will recognize are in the story, too. Indeed, the wishes of my little correspondents have been considered as carefully as... Read More

Confucius was born in the year 550 b.c.,[1] in the land of Lu, in a small village, situated in the western part of the modern province of Shantung. His name was K'ung Ch'iu, and his style (corresponding to our Christian name) was Chung-ni. His countrymen speak of him as K'ung Fu-tzu, the Master, or philosopher... Read More

The first four stories of Eugene Sue's series of historic novels—The Mysteries of the People; or, History of a Proletarian Family Across the Ages—are properly introductory to the wondrous drama in which, as indicated in the preface to the first story of the series, "one family, the descendants of a Gallic chief named Joel, typifies... Read More

Much of the material in the following pages has appeared in current publications. It is here presented in book form in the hope that it may prove of value to those groups of people who in many cities are making a gallant effort to minimize the dangers which surround young people and to provide them... Read More

"A stifling hot day!" General Hobson lifted his hat and mopped his forehead indignantly. "What on earth this place can be like in June I can't conceive! The tenth of April, and I'll be bound the thermometer's somewhere near eighty in the shade. You never find the English climate playing you these tricks." Roger Barnes... Read More

The flying ship of Professor Lucifer sang through the skies like a silver arrow; the bleak white steel of it, gleaming in the bleak blue emptiness of the evening. That it was far above the earth was no expression for it; to the two men in it, it seemed to be far above the stars.... Read More

In Evelyn Waugh's book Decline and Fall his hero, applying for a post as a schoolmaster, is told by the agent, "We class schools in four grades—leading school, first-rate school, good school, and school." Sedleigh in Mike and Psmith would, I suppose, come into the last-named class, though not quite as low in it as... Read More

It may be thought by some that in the pages which follow I have painted in too lurid colours the horrors of a foreign invasion of England. Realism in art, it may be argued, can be carried too far. I prefer to think that the majority of my readers will acquit me of a desire... Read More

TO DR. GEORG BRANDES "Leb' Ich, wenn andere leben?"—Goethe The studies gathered here first appeared in Scribner's Magazine, the Atlantic Monthly, the North American Review, the New York Times, and the New York Sun. The fanciful notion that psychical delicacy is accompanied by a corresponding physical exterior should have received a death-blow in the presence... Read More

Who that has ever seen them can forget the ruins of Blossholme Abbey, set upon their mount between the great waters of the tidal estuary to the north, the rich lands and grazing marshes that, backed with woods, border it east and south, and to the west by the rolling uplands, merging at last into... Read More

There are many of us in England who consider the crime which has been wrought in the Congo lands by King Leopold of Belgium and his followers to be the greatest which has ever been known in human annals. Personally I am strongly of that opinion. There have been great expropriations like that of the... Read More

Most people either say that they agree with Bernard Shaw or that they do not understand him. I am the only person who understands him, and I do not agree with him. G. K. C. A peculiar difficulty arrests the writer of this rough study at the very start. Many people know Mr. Bernard Shaw... Read More

I go to seek on many roads What is to be. True heart and strong, with love to light— Will they not bear me in the fight To order, shun or wield or mould My Destiny? Unpublished Poems of David Mignot. The song was over. The words were David's; the air, one of the countryside.... Read More

When The Rose of Dixie magazine was started by a stock company in Toombs City, Georgia, there was never but one candidate for its chief editorial position in the minds of its owners. Col. Aquila Telfair was the man for the place. By all the rights of learning, family, reputation, and Southern traditions, he was... Read More

TO MY DEAR UNCLE AND AUNT COUNT AND COUNTESS WASS OF CZEGE IN REMEMBRANCE OF MANY HAPPY DAYS SPENT IN TRANSYLVANIA October, 1908 The man in the corner pushed aside his glass, and leant across the table. "Mysteries!" he commented. "There is no such thing as a mystery in connection with any crime, provided intelligence... Read More

Master Hymn-of-Praise Busy folded his hands before him ere he spoke: "Nay! but I tell thee, woman, that the Lord hath no love for such frivolities! and alack! but 'tis a sign of the times that an English Squire should favor such evil ways." "Evil ways? The Lord love you, Master Hymn-of-Praise, and pray do... Read More

With hasty strides George William, the Elector, paced to and fro the length of his cabinet. His features wore a dark, agitated expression, his blue eyes flashed with indignation and wrath; his hands were folded behind his back, as if he would shut out from sight the paper they held with so firm a grasp,... Read More

Why should the proud stomach of American travel, much tossed in the transatlantic voyage, so instantly have itself carried from Liverpool to any point where trains will convey it? Liverpool is most worthy to be seen and known, and no one who looks up from the bacon and eggs of his first hotel breakfast after... Read More

The Princess opened her eyes at the sound of her maid's approach. She turned her head impatiently toward the door. "Annette," she said coldly, "did you misunderstand me? Did I not say that I was on no account to be disturbed this afternoon?" Annette was the picture of despair. Eyebrows and hands betrayed alike both... Read More

There are two conspicuous faults in the literary culture which we are trying to give to our boys and girls in our elementary and secondary schools: it is not sufficiently contemporaneous, and it is not sufficiently national and American. Hence it lacks vitality and actuality. So little of it is carried over into life because... Read More

DEDICATED TO THE DEAREST LITTLE GIRL IN THE WORLD, MY DAUGHTER LOUISE Scene: California. Time: 1898-1901 "Fools and fanatics!" Colonel Worth crumpled the morning paper with a gesture of rage and walked to the window. Elena followed softly and laid her hand on his arm. "What is it, Guardie? I thought you were supremely happy... Read More

The chapters of which this volume is composed have with few exceptions already been collected, and were then associated with others commemorative of other impressions of (no very extensive) excursions and wanderings. The notes on various visits to Italy are here for the first time exclusively placed together, and as they largely refer to quite... Read More