Out of Paradise If I must tell more tales of Raffles, I can but back to our earliest days together, and fill in the blanks left by discretion in existing annals. In so doing I may indeed fill some small part of an infinitely greater blank, across which you may conceive me to have stretched my canvas for the first frank portrait of my friend. The whole truth cannot harm him now. I shall paint in every... more...

It was a bright and beautiful morning in June, 1927. The war between Venezuela and England had been in progress just three weeks, and every one was wondering why the big monarchy had not whipped the little republic off the face of the earth. But the resources of the South American country had been underestimated, and so had the immense difficulties which confronted England in her endeavor to carry on... more...

KAMTSCHATKA. The wind, which continued favourable to us as far as the Northern Tropic, was succeeded by a calm that lasted twelve days. The ocean, as far as the eye could reach, was as smooth as a mirror, and the heat almost insupportable. Sailors only can fully understand the disagreeableness of this situation. The activity usual on shipboard gave place to the most wearisome idleness. Every one was... more...

DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA, TO WIT: Be it remembered, That on this tenth day of November, Anno Domini, eighteen hundred and thirty-one, Thomas R. Gray of the said District, deposited in this office the title of a book, which is in the words as following: "The Confessions of Nat Turner, the leader of the late insurrection in Southampton, Virginia, as fully and voluntarily made to Thomas R. Gray, in the... more...

O MAY I JOIN THE CHOIR INVISIBLE! O may I join the choir invisibleOf those immortal dead who live againIn minds made better by their presence; liveIn pulses stirred to generosity,In deeds of daring rectitude, in scornOf miserable aims that end with self,In thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars,And with their mild persistence urge men’s mindsTo vaster issues.    So to live is heaven:To... more...

PRESERVED MEATS AND MEAT-BISCUITS.   The many-headed public look out for 'nine days' wonders,' and speedily allow one wonder to obliterate the remembrance of that which preceded it. So it is with all newspaper topics, and so it has been in respect to the preserved-meat question. We all know how great was the excitement at the commencement of the present year on this matter. Ships'... more...

Introduction Love of country is a sentiment so universal that it is only on such rare occasions as called this book into being that there is any need of discussing it or justifying it. There is a perfectly absurd statement by Charles Kingsley, in the preface to one of his books, written fifty years ago, in which he says that, while there can be loyalty to a king or a queen, there cannot be loyalty to... more...

THE MUD LARKS. THE French are a great people; the more I see of them the more I admire them, and I have been seeing a lot of them lately. I seem to have spent the last week eating six-course dinners in cellars with grizzled sky-blue colonels, endeavouring to reply to their charming compliments in a mixture of Gaelic and CORNELIUS NEPOS. I myself had no intention of babbling these jargons; it is the... more...

THE STORY OF THE AMBER BEADS Do you know Mother Nature? She it is to whom God has given the care of the earth, and all that grows in or upon it, just as he has given to your mother the care of her family of boys and girls. You may think that Mother Nature, like the famous "old woman who lived in the shoe," has so many children that she doesn't know what to do. But you will know better when... more...

INTRODUCTION. Japanning, as it is generally understood in Great Britain, is the art of covering paper, wood, or metal with a more or less thick coating of brilliant varnish, and hardening the same by baking it in an oven at a suitable heat. It originated in Japan—hence its name—where the natives use a natural varnish or lacquer which flows from a certain kind of tree, and which on its issuing from... more...