THE CALIFORNIA PIONEER SOCIETY. The California Pioneer Society was organized in August, 1850. The photograph of their building appears on the cover of this book, W.D.M. Howard was their first president. Among their early presidents, and prominent in the days of Forty-niners, were Samuel Branan, Thomas Larkins, Wm. D. Farewell, and James Lick—who liberally endowed it. It was organized for the purpose... more...

CHAPTER I.—FROM THE FOREIGN FIELD. Many a time, in college or in camp, I had planned the style of my home-coming. Master Webster, in the Humanities, droning away like a Boreraig bagpipe, would be sending my mind back to Shira Glen, its braes and corries and singing waters, and Ben Bhuidhe over all, and with my chin on a hand I would ponder on how I should go home again when this weary scholarship was... more...

I With the production at Paris in the spring of 1902 of Claude Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande, based on the play of Maeterlinck, the history of music turned a new and surprising page. "It is necessary," declared an acute French critic, M. Jean Marnold, writing shortly after the event, "to go back perhaps to Tristan to find in the opera house an event so important in certain respects... more...

CHAPTER I.   Sam Lyman. In more than one of the sleepy neighborhoods that lay about the drowsy town of Old Ebenezer, Sam Lyman had lolled and dreamed. He had come out of the keen air of Vermont, and for a time he was looked upon as a marvel of energy, but the soft atmosphere of a southwestern state soothed the Yankee worry out of his walk, and made him content to sit in the shade, to wait for the... more...

Chapter IWriters of New Amsterdam   THERE is a fashion nowadays of trimming the fronts of brick houses by placing black bricks among the red in such a way as to form odd and unique designs. It is an attractive way of doing, for it varies the staid simplicity of the solid color. But for all it may seem original and new, it is a style that had its beginning long, long ago, even in the days when the... more...

The Rubaiyat of Ohow Dryyam IWail! for the Law has scattered into flightThose Drinks that were our sometime dear Delight;And still the Morals-tinkers plot and planNew, sterner, stricter Statutes to indite.After the phantom of our Freedom diedMethought a Voice within the Tavern cried:“Drink coffee, Lads, for that is all that’s leftSince our Land of the Free is washed—and dried.”And still the... more...

CHAPTER X. Only two or three days had elapsed since the funeral, when something happened which was to change the drift of Laura's life somewhat, and influence in a greater or lesser degree the formation of her character. Major Lackland had once been a man of note in the State—a man of extraordinary natural ability and as extraordinary learning. He had been universally trusted and honored in his... more...

I   There can be no sane discussion of "crime" and "criminals" without an investigation of the meaning of the words. A large majority of men, even among the educated, speak of a "criminal" as if the word had a clearly defined meaning and as if men were divided by a plain and distinct line into the criminal and the virtuous. As a matter of fact, there is no such division, and... more...

CHAPTER III. Reims—Night—Streets—Arrival—Lion d'Or—Depression—Landlady—Boots—Cathedral—Loneliness—Bed. It is just ten o'clock. Reims seems to be in bed and fast asleep, except for the presence in the streets of a very few persons, official and unofficial, of whom the former are evidently on the alert as to the movements, slouching and uncertain, of the latter. We drive... more...

CHAPTER I. 1800-1825. Commencement of the Nineteenth Century.—Slave Population of 1800.—Memorial Presented to Congress calling Attention to the Slave-trade to the Coast of Guinea.—Georgia cedes the Territory lying West of her to become a State.—Ohio adopts a State Constitution.—William Henry Harrison appointed Governor of the Territory of Indiana.—An Act of Congress prohibiting the... more...