DR. HÜ KING ENG I CHILDHOOD IN A CHRISTIAN HOME Among the earliest converts to Christianity in South China was Hü Yong Mi, the son of a military mandarin of Foochow. He had been a very devout Buddhist, whose struggles after spiritual peace, and whose efforts to obtain it through fasting, sacrifice, earnest study, and the most scrupulous obedience to all the forms of Buddhist worship, remind one strongly of the experiences of Saul of... more...

JANUARY 1662-1663 January 1st, Lay with my wife at my Lord's lodgings, where I have been these two nights, till 10 o'clock with great pleasure talking, then I rose and to White Hall, where I spent a little time walking among the courtiers, which I perceive I shall be able to do with great confidence, being now beginning to be pretty well known among them. Then to my wife again, and found Mrs. Sarah with us in the chamber we lay in. Among other... more...

JAMES FENIMORE COOPER     The light of this world fell on James Fenimore Cooper September 15, 1789. The founder of American romance was born in a quaint, two-storied house of stuccoed brick which now numbers 457 Main St., Burlington, New Jersey. It was then "the last house but one as you go into the country" and among the best of the town. In a like house next door lived the father of the naval hero, Capt. James Lawrence. These two... more...

A DESCRIPTION OF MUSIC. "In the storm, in the smoke, in the fight, I comeTo help thee, dear, with my fife and my drum.My name is Music: and, when the bellRings for the dead men, I rule the knell;And, whenever the mariner wrecked through the blastHears the fog-bell sound, it was I who passed.The poet hath told you how I, a young maid,Came fresh from the gods to the myrtle shade;And thence, by a power divine, I stoleTo where the waters of... more...

CHAPTER I. STEPHEN GIRARD. One May morning, in the year 1776, the mouth of the Delaware Bay was shrouded in a dense fog, which cleared away toward noon, and revealed several vessels just off the capes. From one of these, a sloop, floated the flag of France and a signal of distress. An American ship ran alongside the stranger, in answer to her signal, and found that the French captain had lost his reckoning in a fog, and was in total ignorance... more...

FOREWORD. One day there came into Robert Schumann's ken the work of a young fellow named Brahms, and the master cried aloud in the wilderness, "Behold, the new Messiah of music!" Many have refused to accept Brahms at this rating, and I confess to being one of the unregenerate, but the spirit that kept Schumann's heart open to the appeal of any stranger, that led him into instant enthusiasms of which he was neither afraid nor ashamed, enthusiasms... more...

In the year 1887 he startled the town and made a Society sensation by means of an exceedingly original enterprise which any man of less audacious and prodigious power of work would have shrunk from in its very inception. For years this Titanic task was in hand. This was his celebrated 'artistic joke,' the name given by the 'Times' to a bold parody on a large scale of an average Royal Academy Exhibition. This great show was held at the... more...

CHAPTER I 1685-1706EARLY YEARS The Gays were an old family, who settled in Devonshire when Gilbert le Gay, through his marriage with the daughter and heiress of Curtoyse, came into possession of the manor of Goldsworthy, in Parkham. This they held until 1630, when it passed out of their hands to the Coffins. Subsequently they were associated with the parish of Frittelstock, near Great Torrington. In the Parish Registers of Barnstaple the name... more...

My attention was first called to the works of the poet Jasmin by the eulogistic articles which appeared in the Revue des Deux Mondes, by De Mazade, Nodier, Villemain, and other well-known reviewers. I afterwards read the articles by Sainte-Beuve, perhaps the finest critic of French literature, on the life and history of Jasmin, in his 'Portraits Contemporains' as well as his admirable article on the same subject, in the 'Causeries du Lundi.'... more...

ABOUT THIS BOOK In a very real and interesting way, The King Nobody Wanted tells the story of Jesus. Where the actual words of the Bible are used, they are from the King James Version. But the greater part of the story is told in the words of every day. Since you will certainly want to look up these stories in your own Bible, the references are given on pages 191 and 192. You will discover that often more than one Gospel tells the same story... more...