The author supposes that the first of the above extracts must have impressed him. At any rate, on the night after the reading of it, just as he went to sleep, or on the following morning just as he awoke, he cannot tell which, there came to him the title and the outlines of this... Read More

"There are certain persons who, independently of sex or comeliness, arouse an instant curiosity concerning themselves. The tribe is small, but its members unmistakable. They may possess neither fortune, good looks, nor that adroitness of advance-vision which the stupid name good luck; yet there is about them this inciting quality which proclaims that they have... Read More

One confidential evening, not three months ago, Lionel Wallace told me this story of the Door in the Wall. And at the time I thought that so far as he was concerned it was a true story. He told it me with such a direct simplicity of conviction that I could not do otherwise than... Read More

Bellamy, King's Spy, and Dorward, journalist, known to fame in every English-speaking country, stood before the double window of their spacious sitting-room, looking down upon the thoroughfare beneath. Both men were laboring under a bitter sense of failure. Bellamy's face was dark with forebodings; Dorward was irritated and nervous. Failure was a new thing to... Read More

“The gods, the gods are stronger; time Falls down before them, all men’s knees Bow, all men’s prayers and sorrows climb Like incense toward them; yea, for these Are gods, Felise.” Carquinez had relaxed finally. He stole a glance at the rattling windows, looked upward at the beamed roof, and listened for a moment to... Read More

Saturday had been a strenuous day for the baseball team of Winona University, and Victor Ollnee, its redoubtable catcher, slept late. Breakfast at the Beta Kappa Fraternity House on Sunday started without him, and Gilbert Frenson, who never played ball or tennis, and Arnold Macey, who was too effeminate to swing a bat, divided the... Read More

“Now you-all stop dat a-foolin’ an’ eat yo’ brekfas’ like sens’ble chill’ns,” said Aunt Hyacinth, coming in with a plate of smoking cakes. “Ef yo’ don’, yo’ done be late fo’ school, shore ’nuff.” A ripple of laughter went around the group of five young Darings as a scramble was made for the cakes. “I... Read More

The enterprise of Messrs. T. Nelson & Sons and the friendly accommodation of Messrs. Macmillan render possible this collection in one cover of all the short stories by me that I care for any one to read again. Except for the two series of linked incidents that make up the bulk of the book called... Read More

No! No! she was not going to gush!—Not even though there was nothing in the room at this moment to stand up afterward before her as dumb witness to a moment's possible weakness. Less than nothing in fact: space might have spoken and recalled that moment . . . infinite nothingness might at some future... Read More

With this story, The Galley Slave's Ring; or, The Family of Lebrenn, closes the series of the nineteen historic novels comprised in Eugene Sue's monumental work The Mysteries of the People; or, History of a Proletarian Family Across the Ages. They who have read the preceding eighteen stories will agree that from the moment they... Read More

DEDICATED TO THE MEMORY OF MY FATHER THE REVEREND THOMAS DIXON 1820-1909 SCENE: New York and the Mountains of North Carolina TIME: 1898 to 1907 James Stuart, a young Southerner in New York. Nan Primrose, his fiancée. Mrs. Primrose, her mother. John C. Calhoun Bivens, a millionaire. Dr. Henry Woodman, who loves his neighbour. Harriet,... Read More

The jolliest indoor games for boys and girls demand a floor, and the home that has no floor upon which games may be played falls so far short of happiness. It must be a floor covered with linoleum or cork carpet, so that toy soldiers and such-like will stand up upon it, and of a... Read More

Since I came to this place I have been very restless, wasting my energies in the futile beginning of ill-conceived books. One does not settle down very readily at two and forty to a new way of living, and I have found myself with the teeming interests of the life I have abandoned still buzzing... Read More

To The Memory of My Father Theodore Tweedy Ovington Miss Ovington's description of the status of the Negro in New York City is based on a most painstaking inquiry into his social and economic conditions, and brings out in the most forceful way the difficulties under which the race is laboring, even in the large... Read More

Ditchingham, May 27, 1911. My dear Jehu: For five long but not unhappy years, seated or journeying side by side, we have striven as Royal Commissioners to find a means whereby our coasts may be protected from “the outrageous flowing surges of the sea” (I quote the jurists of centuries ago), the idle swamps turned... Read More

The contrast in personal appearance between the two men, having regard to their relative positions, was a significant thing. The caller, who had just been summoned from the waiting-room, and was standing before the other's table, hat in hand, a little shabby, with ill-brushed hair and doubtful collar, bore in his countenance many traces of... Read More

TO ONE whose name may not be written but to whose tireless faith the shaping of these cruder thoughts to forms more fitly perfect is doubtless due, this finished work is herewith dedicated He who would tell a tale must look toward three ideals: to tell it well, to tell it beautifully, and to tell... Read More

All children, except one, grow up. They soon know that they will grow up, and the way Wendy knew was this. One day when she was two years old she was playing in a garden, and she plucked another flower and ran with it to her mother. I suppose she must have looked rather delightful,... Read More

“We are those fools who could not rest In the dull earth we left behind, But burned with passion for the West, And drank strange frenzy from its wind. The world where wise men live at ease Fades from our unregretful eyes, And blind across uncharted seas We stagger on our enterprise.” “THE SHIP OF... Read More

"Inkpat!" She shot out the word in a bitter playfulness, making it serve for the climax of her complaints. Hobart Gaynor repeated the word—if it could be called a word—after his companion in an interrogative tone. "Yes, just hopeless inkpat, and there's an end of it!" Mrs. Maxon leant back as far as the unaccommodating... Read More

Franz Liszt remarked to a disciple of his: "Once Liszt helped Wagner, but who now will help Liszt?" This was said in 1874, when Liszt was well advanced in years, when his fame as piano virtuoso and his name as composer were wellnigh eclipsed by the growing glory of Wagner—truly a glory he had helped... Read More

May I ask those of my American readers who are not intimately acquainted with the conditions of English rural and religious life to remember that the dominant factor in it—the factor on which the story of Richard Meynell depends—is the existence of the State Church, of the great ecclesiastical corporation, the direct heir of the... Read More

I have written “Impressions and Tales” upon the title-page of this volume, because I have included within the same cover two styles of work which present an essential difference. The second half of the collection consists of eight stories, which explain themselves. The first half is made up of a series of pictures of the... Read More

To begin with I wish to disclaim the possession of those high gifts of imagination and expression which would have enabled my pen to create for the reader the personality of the man who called himself, after the Russian custom, Cyril son of Isidor—Kirylo Sidorovitch—Razumov. If I have ever had these gifts in any sort... Read More

THE oceans are big and broad. I believe two-thirds of the earth's surface is covered with water. What people inhabit this water has always been a subject of curiosity to the inhabitants of the land. Strange creatures come from the seas at times, and perhaps in the ocean depths are many, more strange than mortal... Read More