CHAPTER I. The first of the new meteors landed on the earth in November, 1940. It was discovered by a farmer in his field near Brookline, Massachusetts, shortly after daybreak on the morning of the 11th. Astronomically, the event was recorded by the observatory at Harvard as the sudden appearance of what apparently was a new star, increasing in the short space of a few hours from invisibility to a... more...

WORRIES OF A WINTER WALK The other winter, as I was taking a morning walk down to the East River, I came upon a bit of our motley life, a fact of our piebald civilization, which has perplexed me from time to time, ever since, and which I wish now to leave with the reader, for his or her more thoughtful consideration. The morning was extremely cold. It professed to be sunny, and there was really some... more...

CHAPTER I.I was a traveler, then, upon the moor, I saw the hare that raced about with joy,I heard the woods and distant waters roar, Or heard them not, as happy as a boy; The pleasant season did my heart employ.My old remembrances went from me wholly,And all the ways of men so vain and melancholy.Wordsworth.Gentle Reader: Wherever you may be, in bodily presence, when you cast your eyes on this... more...

WEATHER AND FOLK LORE OF PETERBOROUGH AND DISTRICT. (Second Series). his is a continuation of a Paper on the "Survival of Old Customs" in Peterborough and the neighbourhood which was read at the Royal Archæological Society's meeting in 1898, with an addition of a few more old customs, and more particulars of others, to which I have also added a collection of the quaint Weather and Folk... more...

THE MASTER OF ST. HOSPITAL. 'As poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing all things…' The Honourable and Reverend Eustace John Wriothesley Blanchminster, D.D., Master of St. Hospital-by-Merton, sat in the oriel of his library revising his Trinity Gaudy Sermon. He took pains with these annual sermons, having a quick and fastidious sense of literary style. "It... more...

Colutea Frutescens. Scarlet Bladder Senna. Class and Order. Diadelphia Decandria. Generic Character. Cal. 5-fidus. Legumen inflatum, basi superiore dehiscens. Specific Character and Synonyms. COLUTEA frutescens fruticosa, foliolis ovato-oblongis. Linn. Syst. Vegetab. ed. 14. Murr, p. 668. Ait. Hort. Kew. V. 3. p. 56. Mill. Icon. 99. COLUTEA æthiopica, flore purpureo. Breyn. Cent. 70. t. 29. N181.Of... more...

It should be understood that especially in acute conditions a positive separation of endocarditis from myocarditis is incorrect. Acute endocarditis can probably not occur without some inyocarditis, and myocarditis probably does not occur without some endocardial disturbance and perhaps some pericardial irritation. This is especially true in endocarditis which occurs during any acute infection, even in... more...

CHAPTER I. CHÂTEAU DE CHAMBORD. We walked through the empty galleries and deserted rooms where spiders spin their cobwebs over the salamanders of Francis the First. One is overcome by a feeling of distress at the sight of this poverty which has no grandeur. It is not absolute ruin, with the luxury of blackened and mouldy débris, the delicate embroidery of flowers, and the drapery of waving vines... more...

Treats of Ships in General. There is, perhaps, no contrivance in the wide world more wonderful than a ship—a full-rigged, well-manned, gigantic ship! Those who regard familiar objects in art and nature as mere matters of course, and do not trouble themselves to wander out of the beaten track of everyday thought, may not at first feel the force or admit the truth of this statement. Let such folk... more...

JOHN SMITH Born in England in 1579, died in 1631; served against the Turks, captured, but escaped and returned to England in 1605; sailed for Virginia in 1606, and helped to found Jamestown; captured by Indians and his life saved by Pocahontas the same year; explored the Chesapeake to its head; president of the Colony in 1608; returned to London in 1609; in 1614 explored the coast of New England;... more...