While "The Choir Invisible" was primarily a love story, the setting in which its action moved was historical. Apart from the masterly handling of human passion and the harmony of thought and expression with which he has treated the larger and deeper movements of life, it is probably Mr. Allen's ability to picture forth the early settlement of Kentucky that has given his writings so solid a... more...

DIARY OF SAMUEL PEPYS. APRIL 1667 April 1st. Up, and with Sir J. Minnes in his coach, set him down at the Treasurer's Office in Broad-streete, and I in his coach to White Hall, and there had the good fortune to walk with Sir W. Coventry into the garden, and there read our melancholy letter to the Duke of York, which he likes. And so to talk: and he flatly owns that we must have a peace, for we... more...

CHAPTER I THE CAPTURE OF THE "HITACHI MARU" The S.S. Hitachi Maru, 6,716 tons, of the Nippon Yushen Kaisha (Japan Mail Steamship Co.), left Colombo on September 24, 1917, her entire ship's company being Japanese. Once outside the breakwater, the rough weather made itself felt; the ship rolled a good deal and the storms of wind and heavy rain continued more or less all day. The next day the... more...

FOURTH FIELD AMBULANCE Shortly after the outbreak of War—after the first contingent had been mobilised, and while they were undergoing training—it became evident that it would be necessary to raise another force to proceed on the heels of the first. Three Infantry Brigades with their Ambulances had already been formed; orders for a fourth were now issued, and naturally the Ambulance would be... more...

Chapter I A Little German Surprise Party "Two days and the French will be here! Three days at the outside, and not an ugly Boche left. Just mark my word!" This the patriarchal gentleman in the Hotel Metropole whispered to me about a month after the Germans had captured Brussels. They had taken away his responsibilities as President of the Belgian Red Cross, so that now he had naught to do but... more...

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON When a popular writer dies, the question it has become the fashion with a nervous generation to ask is the question, ‘Will he live?’  There was no idler question, none more hopelessly impossible and unprofitable to answer.  It is one of the many vanities of criticism to promise immortality to the authors that it praises, to patronise a writer with the assurance that our... more...

LETTERS FROM FRANCE. 11th Suffolks, B.E.F., Monday, January 10th, 1916. My darling Mother,— This will probably be a long letter; I hope you will not get bored with it. Please keep this letter and any that follow it, so that at the end of the war I may perhaps achieve fame as the author of "Drivellings of a young Officer at the Front." As I have not got used to the routine out here I will... more...

Harriet Beecher (Stowe) was born June 14, 1811, in the characteristic New England town of Litchfield, Conn. Her father was the Rev. Dr. Lyman Beecher, a distinguished Calvinistic divine, her mother Roxanna Foote, his first wife. The little new-comer was ushered into a household of happy, healthy children, and found five brothers and sisters awaiting her. The eldest was Catherine, born September 6,... more...

CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION This book is intended to deal with substance rather than with form. But, in estimating the work of a teacher who taught exclusively with the pen, it would be perverse to disregard entirely the qualities of the writing which so penetrated and coloured the intellectual life of the Victorian age. Some cursory estimate of Arnold's powers in prose and verse must therefore be... more...