General Books

PREFATORY NOTE I “If Winter Comes” placed its author not only as a Best Seller, but as one of the Great Novelists of to-day. Not always are those royalties crowned by those laurels. Tarzan (of, if I remember rightly, the Apes) never won the double event. And I am told by superior people that, intellectually, Miss Ethel M. Dell takes the hindmost. Personally, I found “If Winter Comes” a most... more...

PREFACE. Again it come to pass, in the fulness of time, that my companion, Josiah Allen, see me walk up and take my ink stand off of the manteltry piece, and carry it with a calm and majestick gait to the corner of the settin' room table devoted by me to literary pursuits. And he sez to me: "What are you goin' to tackle now, Samantha?" And sez I, with quite a good deal of dignity,... more...

(I) AN IRREDUCIBLE DETECTIVE STORY HANGED BY A HAIR OR A MURDER MYSTERY MINIMISED The mystery had now reached its climax. First, the man had been undoubtedly murdered. Secondly, it was absolutely certain that no conceivable person had done it. It was therefore time to call in the great detective. He gave one searching glance at the corpse. In a moment he whipped out a microscope. "Ha! ha!" he... more...

PREFACE. Again it come to pass, in the fulness of time, that my companion, Josiah Allen, see me walk up and take my ink stand off of the manteltry piece, and carry it with a calm and majestick gait to the corner of the settin' room table devoted by me to literary pursuits. And he sez to me: "What are you goin' to tackle now, Samantha?" And sez I, with quite a good deal of dignity,... more...

BURLESQUE AUTOBIOGRAPHY. Two or three persons having at different times intimated that if I would write an autobiography they would read it, when they got leisure, I yield at last to this frenzied public demand, and herewith tender my history: Ours is a noble old house, and stretches a long way back into antiquity. The earliest ancestor the Twains have any record of was a friend of the family by the... more...

BERNARD BLACKMANTLE{*} TO THE REVIEWERS. "But now, what Quixote of the age would careTo wage a war with dirt, and fight with air?" Messieurs the Critics, After twelve months of agreeable toil, made easy by unprecedented success, the period has at length arrived when your high mightinesses will be able to indulge your voracious appetites by feeding and fattening on the work of death. Already... more...

ABOUT HELL.   An item is going the rounds of the papers, to illustrate how large the sun is, and how hot it is, which asserts that if an icicle a million miles long, and a hundred thousand miles through, should be thrust into one of the burning cavities of the sun, it would be melted in the hundredth part of a second, and that it would not cause as much “sissing” as a drop of water on a hot... more...

A BOOK REVIEW "Well sir," said Mr. Dooley, "I jus' got hold iv a book, Hinnissy, that suits me up to th' handle, a gran' book, th' grandest iver seen. Ye know I'm not much throubled be lithrachoor, havin' manny worries iv me own, but I'm not prejudiced again' books. I am not. Whin a rale good book comes along I'm as quick as anny wan to say it... more...

Act I.—Behind the Beyond THE curtain rises, disclosing the ushers of the theater still moving up and down the aisles. Cries of "Program!" "Program!" are heard. There is a buzz of brilliant conversation, illuminated with flashes of opera glasses and the rattle of expensive jewelry. Then suddenly, almost unexpectedly, in fact just as if done, so to speak, by machinery, the lights all... more...

AFFECTION. General St. Amour.—This officer, who distinguished himself in the Imperial service, was the son of a poor Piedmontese peasant, but he never forgot his humble extraction. While the army was in Piedmont, he invited his principal officers to an entertainment, when his father happened to arrive just as they were sitting down to table. This being announced to the general, he immediately rose,... more...