CHAPTER I "Well, Prince, so Genoa and Lucca are now just family estates of the Buonapartes. But I warn you, if you don't tell me that this means war, if you still try to defend the infamies and horrors perpetrated by that Antichrist—I really believe he is Antichrist—I will have nothing more to do with you and you are no longer my friend, no longer my 'faithful slave,' as you call yourself! But how do you do? I see I have frightened... more...

CHAPTER I "Never heard a sound," the younger of the afternoon callers admitted, getting rid of his empty cup and leaning forward in his low chair. "No more tea, thank you, Miss Fairclough. Done splendidly, thanks. No, I went to bed last night soon after eleven—the Colonel had been route marching us all off our legs—and I never awoke until reveille this morning. Sleep of the just, and all that sort of thing, but a jolly sell, all the... more...

CHAPTER I. "Does it never rain here?" asked the Latest Arrival, with sudden shift of the matter under discussion. "How is that, Bentley?" said the officer addressed to the senior present, the surgeon. "You've been here longest." "Don't know, I'm sure," was the languid answer. "I've only been here three years. Try 'Tonio there. He was born hereabouts." So the eyes of the six men turned to the indicated authority, an Apache of uncertain age. He... more...

CHAPTER 1. Amory, Son of Beatrice Amory Blaine inherited from his mother every trait, except the stray inexpressible few, that made him worth while. His father, an ineffectual, inarticulate man with a taste for Byron and a habit of drowsing over the Encyclopedia Britannica, grew wealthy at thirty through the death of two elder brothers, successful Chicago brokers, and in the first flush of feeling that the world was his, went to Bar Harbor and... more...

I Frances Harrison was sitting out in the garden under the tree that her husband called an ash-tree, and that the people down in her part of the country called a tree of Heaven. It was warm under the tree, and Frances might have gone to sleep there and wasted an hour out of the afternoon, if it hadn't been for the children. Dorothy, Michael and Nicholas were going to a party, and Nicky was excited. She could hear Old Nanna talking to Michael... more...

CHAPTER 1. Sun and Shadow Thirty years ago, Marseilles lay burning in the sun, one day. A blazing sun upon a fierce August day was no greater rarity in southern France then, than at any other time, before or since. Everything in Marseilles, and about Marseilles, had stared at the fervid sky, and been stared at in return, until a staring habit had become universal there. Strangers were stared out of countenance by staring white houses, staring... more...

CHAPTER ONE "So of course," wrote Betty Flanders, pressing her heels rather deeper in the sand, "there was nothing for it but to leave." Slowly welling from the point of her gold nib, pale blue ink dissolved the full stop; for there her pen stuck; her eyes fixed, and tears slowly filled them. The entire bay quivered; the lighthouse wobbled; and she had the illusion that the mast of Mr. Connor's little yacht was bending like a wax candle in the... more...

Father and I “Argue the Point.” “Hullo, father!” I sang out, when we had got a little way out from the pontoon and opened the mouth of the harbour, noticing, as I looked over my shoulder to see how we were steering, a string of flags being run up aboard the old Saint Vincent. “They’re signalling away like mad this morning all over the shop! First, atop of the dockyard semaphore; and then the flagship and the... more...

EXPERIENCE (By way of Preface) Of these sketches that tell of ruined Belgium, I must say that I saw what I have told of. They are not meditations in a library. Because of the great courtesy of the Prime Minister of Belgium, who is the war minister, and through the daily companionship of his son, our little group of helpers were permitted to go where no one else could go, to pass in under shell fire, to see action, to lift the wounded out of the... more...

CHAPTER I. SHOOTING A PRISONER OF WAR—A COMRADE TO THE RESCUE. "Sorry to keep you waiting, senor." "Faith, an' it's a polite nation I always said ye were." The first speaker, a Spanish officer, laughed mockingly as he uttered this apology. The man to whom he addressed his words was Dan Daly. Dan had been a boatswain's mate on the battle ship Indiana, then on the Cruiser Columbia, and he was now filling a similar position on the... more...