'Shall I set the tea, Miss?' Miss Cookson turned from the window. 'Yes—bring it up—except the tea of course—they ought to be here at any time.' 'And Mrs. Weston wants to know what time supper's to be?' The fair-haired girl speaking was clearly north-country. She pronounced the 'u' in 'supper,' as though it were the... Read More

The following pages represent all that Henry James lived to write of a volume of autobiographical reminiscences to which he had given the name of one of his own short stories, The Middle Years. It was designed to follow on Notes of a Son and Brother and to extend to about the same length. The... Read More

"Thanks be, I'm done with geometry, learning or teaching it," said Anne Shirley, a trifle vindictively, as she thumped a somewhat battered volume of Euclid into a big chest of books, banged the lid in triumph, and sat down upon it, looking at Diana Wright across the Green Gables garret, with gray eyes that were... Read More

The residence of Mr. Peter Pett, the well-known financier, on Riverside Drive is one of the leading eyesores of that breezy and expensive boulevard. As you pass by in your limousine, or while enjoying ten cents worth of fresh air on top of a green omnibus, it jumps out and bites at you. Architects, confronted... Read More

One of the minor peculiarities of this unprecedented war is the Tour of the Front. After some months of suppressed information—in which even the war correspondent was discouraged to the point of elimination—it was discovered on both sides that this was a struggle in which Opinion was playing a larger and more important part than... Read More

With a somewhat prolonged grinding of the brakes and an unnecessary amount of fuss in the way of letting off steam, the afternoon train from London came to a standstill in the station at Detton Magna. An elderly porter, putting on his coat as he came, issued, with the dogged aid of one bound by... Read More

THIS BOOK OF SPLEEN AND GOSSIP IS INSCRIBED TO MY FRIEND EDWARD ZIEGLER "The Lion and the Unicorn were fighting for the crown: The Lion beat the Unicorn all round the town." ... In the golden book of wit and wisdom, Through the Looking-Glass, the Unicorn rather disdainfully remarks that he had believed children to... Read More

There's a divinity that shapes our ends. Consider the case of Henry Pifield Rice, detective. I must explain Henry early, to avoid disappointment. If I simply said he was a detective, and let it go at that, I should be obtaining the reader's interest under false pretences. He was really only a sort of detective,... Read More

Very early in my life, possibly because of the insatiable curiosity that was born in me, I came to dislike the performances of trained animals. It was my curiosity that spoiled for me this form of amusement, for I was led to seek behind the performance in order to learn how the performance was achieved.... Read More

MARY CRAIG KIMBROUGH To whose persistence in the perilous task of tearing her husband’s manuscript to pieces, the reader is indebted for the absence of most of the faults from this book. Upton Sinclair is one of the not too many writers who have consecrated their lives to the agitation for social justice, and who... Read More

It will be very reasonably asked why I should consent, though upon a sort of challenge, to write even a popular essay in English history, who make no pretence to particular scholarship and am merely a member of the public. The answer is that I know just enough to know one thing: that a history... Read More

To ERNESTO QUESADA Scholar and Thinker Eminent among the Pioneers in the Scientific Study of Human Society This Book is Dedicated "In writing about the South Americans," said one of our Consuls, "no doubt you will always bear in mind that it is the traditional policy of the United States to cultivate their friendship." I... Read More

“Je suis la première au rendez-vous. Je vous attends.” As he got out of the train at the little wayside station he remembered the conversation as if it had been yesterday, instead of fifteen years ago—and his heart went thumping against his ribs so violently that he almost heard it. The original thrill came over... Read More

That is the question which Mrs. Ward, replying to some doubts and queries of an American friend, has undertaken to answer in this series of letters, and every one who reads them will admit that her answer is as complete and triumphant as it is thrilling. Nobody but a woman, an Englishwoman of warm heart,... Read More

To DORA COUNTESS OF CHESTERFIELD A TOKEN OF FRIENDSHIP AND LOVE. Emmuska Orczy "Tyrant! tyrant! tyrant!" It was Pierre who spoke, his voice was hardly raised above a murmur, but there was such an intensity of passion expressed in his face, in the fingers of his hand which closed slowly and convulsively as if they... Read More

January Twenty-second. Dear Mrs. LeCron: In the spring of 1898, after finishing my LIFE OF ULYSSES S. GRANT, I began to plan to go into the Klondike over the Telegraph Trail. One day in showing the maps of my route to William Dean Howells, I said, "I shall go in here and come out there,"... Read More

In this modern industrial civilization of which we are sometimes wont to boast, a certain glacier-like process may be observed. The bewildered, the helpless—and there are many—are torn from the parent rock, crushed, rolled smooth, and left stranded in strange places. Thus was Edward Bumpus severed and rolled from the ancestral ledge, from the firm... Read More

A trestle burned down on the International Railroad. The south-bound from San Antonio was cut off for the next forty-eight hours. On that train was Tonia Weaver's Easter hat. Espirition, the Mexican, who had been sent forty miles in a buckboard from the Espinosa Ranch to fetch it, returned with a shrugging shoulder and hands... Read More

This book sets out as forcibly and exactly as possible the religious belief of the writer. That belief is not orthodox Christianity; it is not, indeed, Christianity at all; its core nevertheless is a profound belief in a personal and intimate God. There is nothing in its statements that need shock or offend anyone who... Read More

CAPTAIN LEW GOLDEN would have saved any foreign observer a great deal of trouble in studying America. He was an almost perfect type of the petty small-town middle-class lawyer. He lived in Panama, Pennsylvania. He had never been “captain” of anything except the Crescent Volunteer Fire Company, but he owned the title because he collected... Read More

“A drove of cattle came into a village called Swords; and was stopped by the rioters.”—Daily Paper. In the place called Swords on the Irish road It is told for a new renown How we held the horns of the cattle, and how We will hold the horns of the devils now Ere the lord... Read More

Fifty-two years ago[1] a few farmers’ families near Greenfield, Michigan, heard that there was another baby at the Fords’—a boy. Mother and son were doing well. They were going to name the boy Henry. Twenty-six years later a little neighborhood on the edge of Detroit was amused to hear that the man Ford who had... Read More

It is now some 122 years since Kant wrote the essay, Zum ewigen Frieden. Many things have happened since then, although the Peace to which he looked forward with a doubtful hope has not been among them. But many things have happened which the great critical philosopher, and no less critical spectator of human events,... Read More

“The Revelations of Devout and Learn’d Who rose before us, and as Prophets Burn’d, Are all but stories, which, awoke from Sleep, They told their comrades, and to Sleep return’d.” The history of civilisation is a history of wandering, sword in hand, in search of food. In the misty younger world we catch glimpses of... Read More

Some of my youthful readers are developing wonderful imaginations. This pleases me. Imagination has brought mankind through the Dark Ages to its present state of civilization. Imagination led Columbus to discover America. Imagination led Franklin to discover electricity. Imagination has given us the steam engine, the telephone, the talking-machine and the automobile, for these things... Read More