I SEA-POWER[1] [Footnote 1: Written in 1899. (_Encyclopoedia_Britannica_.)] Sea-power is a term used to indicate two distinct, though cognate things. The affinity of these two and the indiscriminate manner in which the term has been applied to each have tended to obscure its real significance. The obscurity has been deepened by the frequency with which the term has been confounded with the old phrase,... more...

The receivers, two of them lawyers, had long faces when they sat down across from my desk in the office of the Imperial Printing Company. "Frankly, Mr. Shane," said the older one, "it is a very grave question in our minds whether we should try to continue to operate the business or whether we should close the plant and liquidate the machinery and equipment the best we can." I was... more...

There was a moment in the last century when the Gallican church hoped for a return of internal union and prosperity. This brief era of hope coincided almost exactly with the middle of the century. Voltaire was in exile at Berlin. The author of the Persian Letters and the Spirit of Laws was old and near his end. Rousseau was copying music in a garret. The Encyclopædia was looked for, but only as a... more...

Sir Walter Scott When I was asked to choose a subject for a lecture at the Sorbonne, there came into my mind somehow or other the incident of Scott's visit to Paris when he went to see Ivanhoe at the Odéon, and was amused to think how the story had travelled and made its fortune:— 'It was an opera, and, of course, the story sadly mangled and the dialogue in great part nonsense. Yet it was... more...

CHAPTER I. The Culm, which rises in Somersetshire, and hastening into a fairer land (as the border waters wisely do) falls into the Exe near Killerton, formerly was a lovely trout stream, such as perverts the Devonshire angler from due respect toward Father Thames and the other canals round London. In the Devonshire valleys it is sweet to see how soon a spring becomes a rill, and a rill runs on into a... more...

CHAPTER I WHEN THE SEED TOOK ROOT “I move we go into it, fellows!” “It strikes me as a cracking good idea, all right, and I’m glad Tom stirred us up after he came back from visiting his cousins over in Freeport!” “He says they’ve got a dandy troop, with three full patrols, over there.” “No reason, Felix, why Lenox should be left out in the cold when it comes to Boy Scout activities.... more...

I When old Mr. Marshall finally took to his bed, the household viewed this action with more surprise than sympathy, and with more impatience than surprise. It seemed like the breaking down of a machine whose trustworthiness had been hitherto infallible; his family were almost forced to the acknowledgement that he was but a mere human being after all. They had enjoyed a certain intimacy with him, in... more...

APPLES so round, and bright, and red—O, how I love to see;They look so tempting as they hangUpon the green old tree. A naughty boy once tried to stealFrom off his neighbor's bough;But sad to hear, adown he fell,And is a cripple now.   BOYS oftentimes are rough and rude,And join in wicked play;But hoop and top, and bat and ball,Are better any day. "Hark! hark! I hear a tinkling bell;It... more...

CHAP. I. Of chusing and mounting a Blade. Courage and Skill being often of little Use without a good Weapon, I think it necessary, before I lay down Rules for using it, to shew how to chuse a good Blade, and how it ought to be mounted. The Length of the Blade ought to be proportionable to the Stature of the Person who is to use it: The longest Sword, from Point to Pommel, should reach perpendicularly... more...

THE ACCIDENT OF FRIENDSHIPS "Who is the new girl in the class?" asked Miriam Nesbit, flashing her black eyes from one schoolmate to another, as the girls assembled in the locker room of the Oakdale High School. "Her name is Pierson; that is all I know about her," replied Nora O'Malley, gazing at her pretty Irish face in the looking glass with secret satisfaction. "She's... more...