POLYNESIAN ISLANDS.TUCOPIA.PIERCY ISLANDS.Mr. George Bennett, whose "Journals" and "Researches" denote him to be a shrewd and ingenious observer, has favoured us with the original sketches of the above cuts. They represent three of the spots that stud the Southern Pacific Ocean. The first beams with lovely luxuriance in its wood-crowned heights; while the second and third rise from the... more...

RANDOM FLIGHTS. By Marcus Macleod. (With renewed acknowledgments to "The Skittish Weekly.") It was with inexpressible relief that I heard of the narrow escape of the Rev. Urijah Basham. Presiding at a jumble sale at Sidcup he described how he had been within an ace of partaking of rhubarb leaves at luncheon on the previous day, but, having read in the morning's paper of their fatal... more...

The Plains Country. Seventy years ago, when some of the events here recounted took place, Indians were Indians, and the plains were the plains indeed. Those plains stretched out in limitless rolling swells of prairie until they met the blue sky that on every hand bent down to touch them. In spring brightly green, and spangled with wild flowers, by midsummer this prairie had grown sere and yellow.... more...

CHAPTER I TOM MEETS ONE FRIEND AND IS REMINDED OF ANOTHER As Tom Slade went through Terrace Avenue on his way to the Temple Camp office, where he was employed, he paused beside a truck backed up against the curb in front of a certain vacant store. Upon it was a big table and wrestling with the table was Pete Connigan, the truckman—the very same Pete Connigan at whom Tom used to throw rocks and whom... more...

PARTY-SIMILES OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY—NO. I. "FOXES AND FIREBRANDS." NO. II. "THE TROJAN HORSE." With Englishmen, at least, the seventeenth was a century pre-eminent for quaint conceits and fantastic similes: the literature of that period, whether devotional, poetical, or polemical, was alike infected with the universal mania for strained metaphors, and men vied with each other in... more...

Oswald, Lord Nelville, Peer of Scotland, quitted Edinburgh for Italy during the winter of 1794-5. He possessed a noble and handsome figure, an abundance of wit, an illustrious name, and an independent fortune, but his health was impaired by deeply-rooted sorrow, and his physicians, fearing that his lungs were attacked, had prescribed him the air of the South. Though indifferent as to the preservation... more...

The 18th of the Month Scheval, in the Year of the Hegira, 837. Thou Joy of ev’ry Eye! Thou Torment of every Heart! Thou Intellectual Light! I do not kiss the Dust of thy Feet; because thou seldom art seen out of the Seraglio, and when thou art, thou walkest only on the Carpets of Iran, or on Beds of Roses. I here present you with a Translation of the Work of an ancient Sage, who having the Happiness... more...

THE RUBBER. 1. The rubber is the best of three games. If the first two games are won by the same players, the third game is played; should the score of the third game lap, a fourth game is played. 2. A game consists of five points. Should a player order up, assist, adopt, or make the trump, and he and his partner take five tricks, they score two; three or four tricks, they score one. If they fail to... more...

CHAPTER I LOST ON AN OCEAN FLOOR The handsome clubroom of the Black Bear Patrol, Boy Scouts of America, in the City of New York, was ablaze with light, and as noisy as healthy, happy boys could well make it. "Over in the Chinese Sea!" shouted Jimmie McGraw from a table which stood by an open window overlooking the brilliantly illuminated city. "Do we go to the washee-washee land this... more...

CHAPTER I THE HERO AND HIS ONLY RELATIVE Martin Rattler was a very bad boy. At least his aunt, Mrs. Dorothy Grumbit, said so; and certainly she ought to have known, if anybody should, for Martin lived with her, and was, as she herself expressed it, "the bane of her existence,—the very torment of her life." No doubt of it whatever, according to Aunt Dorothy Grumbit's showing, Martin... more...