Non-Classifiable Books

FOREWORD PIRATES, Buccaneers, Marooners, those cruel but picturesque sea wolves who once infested the Spanish Main, all live in present-day conceptions in great degree as drawn by the pen and pencil of Howard Pyle. Pyle, artist-author, living in the latter half of the nineteenth century and the first decade of the twentieth, had the fine faculty of transposing himself into any chosen period of history... more...

I. VIRCHOW AND HAECKEL AT THE CONGRESS OF MUNICH. On the 18th of September, 1877, Ernest Haeckel, the celebrated embryologist of Jena, delivered at the Congress of Naturalists, which was held at Munich, an eloquent address defending and propagating Darwinism, which was at that time the object of the most bitter polemical attacks. A few days afterward, Virchow, the great pathologist,—an active member... more...

CHAPTER I "PICKWICK" AND THE COACHING AGE Dickens, like all great authors, had a tendency to underestimate the value of his most popular book. At any rate, it is certainly on record that he thought considerably more of some of his other works than he did of the immortal Pickwick. But The Pickwick Papers has maintained its place through generations, and retains it to-day, as the most popular... more...

CHAPTER I I was laughed at for nearly twenty years because I stammered. I found school a burden, college a practical impossibility and life a misery because of my affliction. I was born in Wabash county, Indiana, and as far back as I can remember, there was never a time when I did not stammer or stutter. So far as I know, the halting utterance came with the first word I spoke and for almost twenty... more...

PREFACE These chapters were begun the day after I got back to New York from the Atlanta penitentiary, and went on from day to day to the end. I did not know, at the start, what the thing would be like at the finish, and I made small effort to make it look shapely and smooth; but the inward impulse in me to write it, somehow, was irresistible, in spite of the other impulse to go off somewhere and rest... more...

THE STOKER'S CATECHISM. 1. Question.—How would you proceed to get steam up in a boiler? Answer.—Having filled the boiler with water to the usual height, that is to say, about four inches over the crown of the fire-tube, I throw in several shovelfuls of coal or coke towards the bridge, left and right, keeping the centre clear; then I place the firewood in the centre, throw some coals on it,... more...

INTERNATIONAL NEWS SERVICEREPORTS NEWS OF THE WORLDFOR EVENING JOURNALREADERS   International News Service has firmly established itself as the dominant press service in the afternoon newspaper field. Its news dispatches, gathered from every corner of the universe, likewise are published in newspapers throughout the civilized world. International News Service is truly international in scope, linking... more...

THE MERMAID OF ZENNOR Carved on one of the pews in the church of Zennor in West Cornwall is a strange figure of a mermaid. Depicted with flowing hair, a mirror in one hand and a comb in the other, the Zennor folk tell a strange story about her. Years and years ago, they say, a beautiful and richly dressed lady used to attend the church sometimes. Nobody knew where she came from, although her unusual... more...

His Early Years To Italy, at whose liberal well-head English Art has so often renewed itself, we turn naturally for an opening to this chronicle of a great English artist's career. Frederic Leighton was the painter of our time who strove hardest to keep alive an Italian ideal of beauty in London; therefore it is in Italy, the Italy of Raphael and Angelo and his favourite Giotteschi, that we must... more...

HISTORY OF THE SEE AND CITY At York the city did not grow up round the cathedral as at Ely or Lincoln, for York, like Rome or Athens, is an immemorial—a prehistoric—city; though like them it has legends of its foundation. Geoffrey of Monmouth, whose knowledge of Britain before the Roman occupation is not shared by our modern historians, gives the following account of its beginning:—"Ebraucus,... more...