General Books

The Great Idea The village schoolroom was packed as full as it would hold, and the air was so thick that, as Sylvia said, it could almost be scooped up with a spoon. The lecturer was stout and perspiring freely, but he meant to do his duty at all costs, and he rose to the occasion with tremendous vigour, declaiming in really fine style: "It is a poor man's paradise, and there is no place on... more...

CHAPTER I A Tornado Towards the end of a long hot day, a shabby mixed train stopped at one of the most wonderful townships in the world, Hergott Springs, the first of the great cattle-trucking depots of Central Australia. It was dark, but a hurricane lantern, swung under a veranda, showed that the men who were waiting for the train were not ordinary men. They were men of the desert. Most of them were... more...

Chapter One. Some years ago two travellers, mounted on wiry yet strong looking steeds, were wending their way through a forest in Australia. They were both young and dressed much alike in broad-brimmed pith hats, loose red shirts, corduroy trousers and high boots with spurs. Each of them had stuck in his belt an axe, a brace of pistols, and a long knife; while at his back was slung a... more...

SOMEWHAT CONTAGIOUS It is October and the mountains are waking from their short winter sleep. It is October, the month of the moving mists. Come and let us take a walk, not down Fleet Street with Dr. Johnson, but up a mountain side with Nature,—nay, with God Himself. There is nothing to see, absolutely nothing at all. You know that there are trees on either hand of you, and that the undergrowth is... more...

CHRISTMAS ON THE DESERTARY was worried. To-morrow would be Christmas. Christmas! a day always spent close to New York City, that place where Santa Claus obtained all the contents of his wonderful pack. Here she was, out in the heart of the great Arizona Desert. Her little head was sorely puzzled over many things. Around her were sand, rocks and mountains; no snow, no ice, save on the tops of the... more...

CHAPTER I THE WORK OF THE WOLF PACK "Hold up, Bob!" "Any signs of the lame yearling, Frank?" "Well, there seems to be something over yonder to the west; but the sage crops up, and interferes a little with my view." "Here, take the field glasses and look; while I cinch my saddle girth, which has loosened again." Frank Haywood adjusted the glasses to his eye. Then, rising... more...

Jimmy Rabbit wanted a new tail. To be sure, he already had a tail—but it was so short that he felt it was little better than none at all. Frisky Squirrel and Billy Woodchuck had fine, bushy tails; and so had all the other forest-people, except the Rabbit family. Jimmy had tried his hardest to get a handsome tail for himself. And once he had nearly succeeded. For he almost cut off Frisky... more...

THE PROFESSOR AND THE CAPTAIN. The Young America, with every rag of canvas set, including studding-sails alow and aloft, rolled and pitched gracefully on the long swells of the German Ocean. The wind was very light from the north-west, and there was hardly enough of it to give the ship steerage-way. A mile off, on her starboard bow, was the Josephine, beclouded in the quantity of sail she carried, but... more...

CHAPTER I. THE UNSUSPECTING TRAVELER. The steamship Baltic was on the point of sailing from America to Europe. The usual scenes were visible on the wharf–the rushing on board of belated freight and baggage–the crush of passengers and their friends on deck, or down in the cabins, where partings were being drunk in wine; the crowd of steerage passengers forward, trying to keep out of the way of the... more...

THE YOUNG ALASKANS AT HOME IN ALASKA “ Steamboat! Steamboat!” Rob McIntyre had been angling for codfish at the top of Valdez dock for the past half-hour. Now, hearing the hoarse boom of the ocean vessel’s whistle out in the fog-bank which covered the mouth of the harbor, he pulled in his fishing-line, hurriedly threw together his heap of flapping fish, and, turning, sent shoreward the cry always... more...