INTRODUCTORY TO "THE MIRACULOUS PITCHER" And when, and where, do you think we find the children next? No longer in the winter-time, but in the merry month of May. No longer in Tanglewood play-room, or at Tanglewood fireside, but more than half-way up a monstrous hill, or a mountain, as perhaps it would be better pleased to have us call it. They had set out from home with the mighty purpose of... more...

PREFACE In approaching "The Historical Nights' Entertainment" I set myself the task of reconstructing, in the fullest possible detail and with all the colour available from surviving records, a group of more or less famous events. I would select for my purpose those which were in themselves bizarre and resulting from the interplay of human passions, and whilst relating each of these events... more...

CHAPTER I A REVELATION A group of boys was assembled in an open field to the west of the public schoolhouse in the town of Crawford. Most of them held hats in their hands, while two, stationed sixty feet distant from each other, were "having catch." Tom Pinkerton, son of Deacon Pinkerton, had just returned from Brooklyn, and while there had witnessed a match game between two professional clubs.... more...

RENEWALS An alphabetical list under author, issuing body, or title of books, pamphlets, serials, and contributions to periodicals for which renewal copyrights were registered during the period covered by this issue. Included in the list are cross-references from the names of claimants, joint authors, editors, etc., and from variant forms of these names. Information relating to both the original and... more...

CHAPTER I The front gate screaked, a slow, timid, almost furtive sort of screak, and then banged suddenly shut as though it despaired of further concealment. Mary Louise gathered her sewing to her, rose to her feet, and looked out. It was raining. Through the glass upper half of the door that opened from the sitting room upon the side porch she could see the swelling tendrils of the vines that crawled... more...

BRILLIANCY OF THE "SUN." The Moon, as is generally known, shines with a borrowed light, while the Sun is popularly supposed to manufacture its own gas and to arrange its pyrotechnics on the premises. Our N.Y. Sun, however, does not always manufacture its own beams. By far the most brilliant of the "sunbeams," for instance, published in that journal of November 1st, is the quaint and... more...

CHAPTER I Felix Brand Has a Mysterious Experience Felix Brand awoke with a start and looked about him with a puzzled stare. And yet there was nothing unfamiliar in what met his gaze. The bed wherein he lay and its luxurious appointments were of his own recent buying. He had himself designed the decorations of the room and selected its furnishings. As his eyes leaped from one object to another his... more...

THE CÆSARS. The condition of the Roman Emperors has never yet been fully appreciated; nor has it been sufficiently perceived in what respects it was absolutely unique. There was but one Rome: no other city, as we are satisfied by the collation of many facts, either of ancient or modern times, has ever rivalled this astonishing metropolis in the grandeur of magnitude; and not many—if we except the... more...

A, the first letter in many alphabets. The sound most commonly belonging to it, as in French, Italian, German, &c., is that which is heard in father, pronounced short or long. In English the letter is made to represent at least seven sounds, as in father, mat, mate, mare, many, ball, what, besides being used in such digraphs as ea in heat, oa in boat.—A, in music, is the sixth note in the... more...

Preface. It is said that only travellers in the arid lands of the East really know the value of water. To them the Well in the Desert is a treasure and a blessing: unspeakably so, when the water is pure and sweet; yet even though it be salt and brackish, it may still save life. Was it less so, in a figurative sense, to the travellers through that great desert of the Middle Ages, wherein the wells were... more...