Fiction Books

CHAPTER I WESTWARD WITH THE GRAND TRUNK PACIFIC "'What went ye out into the wilderness to see?' They answered thus, 'So that we might not see the city.'"—SIR WILLIAM BUTLER. The new steel trail the railway men are laying from Edmonton leads away and away, I cannot say whither. For these many days I have had an anxious desire to follow it and the glories thereof. I am tired... more...

Directness and simplicity characterize pioneer machine tools because they were intended to accomplish some quite specialized task and the need for versatility was not apparent. History does not reveal the earliest forms of any primitive machines nor does it reveal much about the various early stages in evolution toward more complex types. At best we have discovered and dated certain developments as... more...

PREFACE. In his earlier works, notably in "The Mystery of a Hansom Cab" and "The Silent House in Pimlico," Mr. Hume won a reputation second to none for plot of the stirring, ingenious, misleading, and finally surprising kind, and for working out his plot in vigorous and picturesque English. In "The Bishop's Secret," while there is no falling off in plot and style, there is... more...

JUDICIAL MENTAL OPERATIONSVitalizing Influence of Certain IdeasOne of the greatest discoveries of modern times is the impellent energy of thought. That every idea in consciousness is energizing and carries with it an impulse to some kind of muscular activity is a comparatively new but well-settled principle of psychology. That this principle could be made to serve practical ends seems never to have... more...

I. My Revelations as a Spy In many people the very name "Spy" excites a shudder of apprehension; we Spies, in fact, get quite used to being shuddered at. None of us Spies mind it at all. Whenever I enter a hotel and register myself as a Spy I am quite accustomed to see a thrill of fear run round the clerks, or clerk, behind the desk. Us Spies or We Spies—for we call ourselves both—are thus... more...

In July, 1957, members of a field party from the University of Kansas Museum of Natural History, under the direction of Mr. Sydney Anderson, spent 12 days collecting vertebrates in the vicinity of Creel in southwestern Chihuahua. Among the specimens are two snakes representing an undescribed species of the genus Geophis. A description and illustrations of these two specimens were prepared and submitted... more...

1. How the Nome King Became Angry The Nome King was in an angry mood, and at such times he was very disagreeable. Every one kept away from him, even his Chief Steward Kaliko. Therefore the King stormed and raved all by himself, walking up and down in his jewel-studded cavern and getting angrier all the time. Then he remembered that it was no fun being angry unless he had some one to frighten and make... more...

Wendel Bollman’s name survives today solely in association with the Bollman truss, and even in this respect is known only to a few older civil and railroad engineers. The Bollman system of trussing, along with those of Whipple and Fink, may be said to have introduced the great age of the metal bridge, and thus, directly, the modern period of civil engineering. Bollman’s bridge truss, of which the... more...

ON PUNISHMENT. How to punish crime, and in so doing reform the criminal; how to uphold the man as a terror to evil-doers, and yet at the same time be implanting in him the seeds of a future more happy and prosperous life—this is perhaps the most difficult problem of legislation. We are far from despairing of some approximation to a solution, which is the utmost that can be looked for; but we are also... more...

HOW FINN CAME HOME Rightly to appreciate Jan's character and parts you must understand his origin. For this you must go back to the greatest of modern Irish wolfhounds, Finn; and to the Lady Desdemona, of whom it was said, by no less an authority than Major Carthwaite, that she was "the most perfectly typical bloodhound of her decade." And that was in the fifteenth month of her age, just... more...