DEDICATION. Si doulce la Margarite. When I first saw you—never mind the year—you could speak no English, and when next I saw you, after a lapse of two years, you would prattle no French; when again we met, you were the nymph with bright and flowing hair, which frightened his Highness Prince James out of his feline senses, when, as you came in by the door, he made his bolt by the window. It was then... more...

CHAPTER I TOM READE HAS A "BRAND-NEW ONE" "Hello, Timmy!" "'Lo, Reade." "Warm night," observed Tom Reade, as he paused not far from the street corner to wipe his perspiring face and neck with his handkerchief. "Middling warm," admitted Timmy Finbrink. Yet the heat couldn't have made him extremely uncomfortable, for Tom Reade, amiable and budding senior... more...

THE NEW FABLE OF THE PRIVATE AGITATOR AND WHAT HE COOKED UP Ambition came, with Sterling Silver Breast-Plate and Flaming Sword, and sat beside a Tad aged 5. The wee Hopeful lived in a Frame House with Box Pillars in front and Hollyhocks leading down toward the Pike. "Whither shall I guide you?" asked Ambition. "Are you far enough from the Shell to have any definite Hankering?" "I... more...

To my old Friend, Peter Schlemihl. Well! years and years have pass’d,—and lo! thy writing   Comes to my hands again,—and, strange to say,I think of times when the world’s school, inviting   Our early friendship, new before us lay;—Now I can laugh at foolish shame—delighting   In thee, for I am old—my hair is grey,—And I will call thee friend, as then—not coldly,But proudly to... more...

Introduction. A book for boys by W.H.G. Kingston needs no introduction. Yet a few things may be said about the origin and the purpose of this story. When the Boys’ Own Paper was first started, Mr Kingston, who showed deep interest in the project, undertook to write a story of the sea, during the wars, under the title of “From Powder-monkey to Admiral.” Talking the matter over, it was objected... more...

CHAPTER I. WHEN one has a good tale to tell, he should try to be brief, and not say more than he can help ere he makes a fair start; so I shall not say a word of what took place on board the ship till we had been six days in a storm. The barque had gone far out of her true course, and no one on board knew where we were. The masts lay in splints on the deck, a leak in the side of the ship let more in... more...

Wish the First.—Under the Sea. ITTLE Effie Gilder's porridge did taste good! and so it ought; for beside that Mother Gilder made it, and Mother Gilder's porridge was always just right, Effie was eating it on her seat upon the sea-shore in front of her father's house. The sun was just going down and the tide was rising, so that the little waves came tumbling up on the beach, as if they... more...

IN THE ARK "Oh, Bunny! Here comes Bunker Blue!" "Where is he? I don't see him!" Bunny Brown and his Sister Sue were playing on the shady side porch of their house one morning, when the little girl, looking up from a cracker box which had been made into a bed—where she was putting her doll to sleep—saw a tall boy walking up the path. "There's Bunker!" went on Sue to... more...

CHAPTER I A QUEER HUNT "Let me count noses now, to see if you're all here," said Mother Bunker with a laugh, as her flock of children gathered around her. "Don't you want some help?" asked Grandma Bell. "Can you count so many boys and girls all alone, Amy?" "Oh, I think so," answered Mother Bunker. "You see I am used to it. I count them every time we come... more...

Chapter XXXII. Coronation Day. Let us go backward a few hours, and place ourselves in Westminster Abbey, at four o'clock in the morning of this memorable Coronation Day.  We are not without company; for although it is still night, we find the torch-lighted galleries already filling up with people who are well content to sit still and wait seven or eight hours till the time shall come for them to... more...