CHAPTER I MOVING IN Betty Wales sat down on the one small bare spot on the floor of her new room at the Belden House, and looked about her with a sigh of mingled relief and weariness. "Well," she remarked to the little green lizard, who was perched jauntily on a pile of pillows, "anyhow the things are all out of the trunks and boxes, and I suppose after a while they'll get into their... more...

INTRODUCTION. In the summer of 1848 the author of the following tale was a passenger on board a steamboat from New Orleans to Cincinnati. During the passage—one of the most prolonged and uncomfortable in the annals of western river navigation—the plot of this story was arranged. Many of its incidents, and all its descriptions of steamboat life, will be recognized by the voyager of the Mississippi.... more...

CHAPTER I. THE CAVE OF TERRIBLE THINGS. A great unrest brooded over mountain and forest; the blue Caribbean lay hushed and glaring, as if held in leash by a power greater than that which ordered its daily ebb and flow. Men moved or stood beneath the trees on the cliffside in attitudes of supreme awe or growing uneasiness, according to their kind: for among them were numbered Spaniard and Briton, creole... more...

In my first communication I did myself the pleasure to send you a correct list of all the royal letters which had been sent by different English monarchs to the Grand Masters of Malta, with their dates, the languages in which they were written, and stating to whom they were addressed. I now purpose to forward with your permission from time to time, literal translations of these letters, which Mr.... more...

THE ROAD NOT TAKEN Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both And be one traveler, long I stood And looked down one as far as I could To where it bent in the undergrowth;   Then took the other, as just as fair, And having perhaps the better claim, Because it was grassy and wanted wear; Though as for that the passing there Had worn them really about the same,   And both... more...

CHAPTER I. A STARTLING DISCOVERY. Miss Merivale had not been paying much heed to the eager talk that was going on between Rose and Pauline Smythe at the window. The long drive from Woodcote had made her head ache, and she was drowsily wishing that Miss Smythe would get her the cup of tea she had promised, when the sound of a name made her suddenly sit bolt upright, her kind old face full of anxious... more...

MASSILLON 1662-1742 THE SMALL NUMBER OF THE ELECT And many lepers were in Israel in the time of Eliseus the prophet; and none of them was cleansed, saving Naaman the Syrian.—Luke iv., 27. Every day, my brethren, you continue to ask of us, whether the road to heaven is really so difficult, and the number of the saved really so small as we represent? To a question so often proposed, and still oftener... more...

Upon a certain gladsome occasion a certain man went into a certain restaurant in a certain large city, being imbued with the idea that he desired a certain kind of food. Expense was with him no object. The coming of the holidays had turned his thoughts backward to the care-free days of boyhood and he longed for the holidaying provender of his youth with a longing that was as wide as a river and as deep... more...

CHAPTER ONE For several months it has been the pleasant duty of the writer of the following deliverance to travel around the United States, lecturing upon sundry War topics to indulgent American audiences. No one—least of all a parochial Briton—can engage upon such an enterprise for long without beginning to realize and admire the average American's amazing instinct for public affairs, and the... more...

HYGEIA, A CITY OF HEALTH We meet in this Assembly, a voluntary Parliament of men and women, to study together and to exchange knowledge and thought on works of every-day life and usefulness. Our object, to make the present existence better and happier; to inquire, in this particular section of our Congress:—What are the conditions which lead to the pain and penalty of disease; what the means for the... more...