December 23, 1914. An exceptionally well-informed Berlin newspaper has discovered that, owing to the war, Ireland is suffering from a horse famine, and many of the natives are now to be seen driving cattle. An appeal is being made in Germany for cat-skins for the troops. In their Navy, on the other hand, they often get the cat itself. In offering congratulations to the "Green Howards" on the... more...

SOME QUEER RACING-CRAFT. The illustrations on this page are of two varieties of sail-boats that are very common in the vicinity of New York, and quite rare in other parts of the country. They are boats built expressly for speed, and are used almost entirely for racing. The upper of the two pictures represents a regatta of swift sailing craft that, as can be readily seen, would be totally unfit for a... more...

It was a terrific storm. The wind swept down the river, raising a ridge of white water in its path. The rain came down harder, so the boys thought, than they had ever seen it come down before, and the glare of the lightning and the crash of the thunder were frightful. "What luck it is that we got the tent pitched in time!" exclaimed Joe. "We're as dry and comfortable here as if we were... more...

The Woman of the Saeter. By Jerome K. Jerome. Illustrations by A. S. Boyd. Wild-Reindeer stalking is hardly so exciting a sport as the evening’s verandah talk in Norroway hotels would lead the trustful traveller to suppose. Under the charge of your guide, a very young man with the dreamy, wistful eyes of those who live in valleys, you leave the farmstead early in the forenoon, arriving towards... more...

The story which I have to tell is more than strange. It is so terrible, so incredible, so entirely contrary to all that any ordinary reader of the London Journal or the "penny dreadfuls" has ever heard of, that even now I have some doubt in telling it. I happen, however, to know it is true, and so does my husband. My husband will come in presently with his narrative. There! that ought to make... more...

CHAPTER XXII. MR. MADGIN AT THE HELM. Mr. Madgin's house stood somewhat back from the main street of Eastbury. It was an old-fashioned house, of modest exterior, and had an air of being elbowed into the background by the smarter and more modern domiciles on each side of it. Its steep, overhanging roof and porched doorway gave it a sleepy, reposeful look, as though it were watching the on-goings of... more...

CHAPTER I. Every one who knows Oxford, and a good many besides, must have heard of certain periodical migrations of the younger members of that learned university into distant and retired parts of her Majesty’s dominions, which (on the “lucus a non lucendo” principle) are called and known by the name of Reading Parties. Some half-dozen undergraduates, in peril of the coming examination, form... more...

SLAVE SOCIETY ON THE SOUTHERN PLANTATION In the year 1619, memorable in the history of the United States, a Dutch trading vessel carried to the colonists of Virginia twenty Negroes from the West Indies and sold them as slaves, thus laying the foundation of slave society in the American colonies. In the seventeenth century slavery made but little progress in these parts of America, and during that whole... more...

In my third and fourth letters on American finances and resources, the following comparisons were instituted: Massachusetts and New Jersey, Free States, with Maryland and South Carolina, Slave States; New York and Pennsylvania, Free States, with Virginia, Slave State; Rhode Island, Free State, with Delaware, Slave State; Illinois, Free State, with Missouri, Slave State; the Free States of 1790, with... more...

CHESTER ALAN ARTHUR. By Ben: Perley Poore. Chester Alan Arthur was born at Fairfield, Vermont, October 5, 1830. His father, the Reverend Doctor William Arthur, was a Baptist clergyman, who emigrated from county Antrim, Ireland, when only eighteen years of age. He had received a thorough classical education, and was graduated from Belfast University, one of the foremost institutions of learning in... more...