THE HISTORY OF THE APPLE-TREE. It is remarkable how closely the history of the Apple-tree is connected with that of man. The geologist tells us that the order of the Rosaceae, which includes the Apple, also the true Grasses, and the Labiatae, or Mints, were introduced only a short time previous to the appearance of man on the globe. It appears that apples made a part of the food of that unknown primitive people whose traces have lately been... more...

To a largely increasing number of young girls college doors are opening every year. Every year adds to the number of men who feel as a friend of mine, a successful lawyer in a great city, felt when in talking of the future of his four little children he said, "For the two boys it is not so serious, but I lie down at night afraid to die and leave my daughters only a bank account." Year by year, too, the experiences of life are teaching mothers... more...

CHAPTER I. SUFFERING. It has been said "Woman has a capacity for suffering," and during all the years of the past, in all countries and among all nations, woman has been proving this true. Since the dark day when "there stood by the cross of Jesus, his mother," and there came to that mother's heart the agony of bereavement, the human disappointment and pangs, whose torture only the Father God could understand,—from that day till the... more...

IHAVERHILL The whole valley of the Merrimac, from its source among the New Hampshire hills to where it meets the ocean at Newburyport, has been celebrated in Whittier's verse, and might well be called "Whittier-Land." But the object of these pages is to describe only that part of the valley included in Essex County, the northeastern section of Massachusetts. The border line separating New Hampshire from the Bay State is three miles north of the... more...

THE WHITE SLAVES OF THE BOSTON "SWEATERS".   "Hard work is good an' wholesome, past all doubt;  But 'tain't so, ef the mind gits tuckered out." —JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL: Biglow Papers. A wise man of the old time, after a tour of observation, came home to say, "So I returned, and considered all the oppressions that are done under the sun: and behold the tears of such, as were oppressed, and they had no comforter; and on... more...

WHISTLER STORIES The studios of Chelsea are full of Whistler anecdotes. One tells of a female model to whom he owed some fifteen shillings for sittings. She was a Philistine of the Philistines who knew nothing of her patron's fame and was in no way impressed with his work. One day she told another artist that she had been sitting to a little Frenchman called Whistler, who jumped about his studio and was always complaining that people were... more...

FOREWORD Once upon a time as four blind men sat by the roadside they heard the tramp of an elephant’s feet, and said one to another, “Here comes an elephant; now we shall know what he is like.” The first blind man put out his hand and touched the elephant’s broad side. The second took hold of a leg. The third grasped a tusk, and the fourth clutched the animal’s tail. “Now do you know what an elephant looks... more...

THE SHADOW There surely may come a time for each of us, if we have lived with any animation or interest, if we have had any constant or even fitful desire to penetrate and grasp the significance of the strange adventure of life, a time, I say, when we may look back a little, not sentimentally or with any hope of making out an impressive case for ourselves, and interrogate the memory as to what have been the most real, vivid, and intense things... more...

WHEATGROWING IN AUSTRALIA. With the growing scarcity of foodstuffs that has become a world-wide feature of the last few years, the wheatgrower is one of the most important necessities in civilisation. He has prospered in the past, but the future holds still greater and richer prospects. And in no country in the world are those prospects brighter than in the Commonwealth of Australia. The world's surface is gradually filling up, and most of the... more...

I. THE MEDICAL MISTAKE A book of modern social inquiry has a shape that is somewhat sharply defined. It begins as a rule with an analysis, with statistics, tables of population, decrease of crime among Congregationalists, growth of hysteria among policemen, and similar ascertained facts; it ends with a chapter that is generally called "The Remedy." It is almost wholly due to this careful, solid, and scientific method that "The Remedy" is never... more...