THE LOVES OF THE PLANTS.         Descend, ye hovering Sylphs! aerial Quires,        And sweep with little hands your silver lyres;        With fairy footsteps print your grassy rings,        Ye Gnomes! accordant to the tinkling strings;5 While in soft notes I tune to oaten reed        Gay hopes, and amorous sorrows of the mead.—        From giant Oaks,... more...

Helen of Troy Wild flight on flight against the fading dawnThe flames' red wings soar upward duskily.This is the funeral pyre and Troy is deadThat sparkled so the day I saw it first,And darkened slowly after. I am sheWho loves all beauty—yet I wither it.Why have the high gods made me wreak their wrath—Forever since my maidenhood to sowSorrow and blood about me? Lo, they keepTheir bitter care... more...

The earliest records of the administration of the post office in Canada bear date 1750, at which period the celebrated Benjamin Franklin was Deputy Postmaster General of North America. At the time of his appointment the revenue of the department was insufficient to defray his salary of £300 per annum; but under his judicious management not only was the postal accommodation in the Provinces... more...

Editorial Preface "'Tis easy as lying."—Hamlet It is safe to presume that even the most inquisitive book-hunters of the present day, and few of the fellowship during two or three generations past, have encountered the scarce and curious little volume here presented, as in a friendly literary resurrection—Robert Antrobus's "The Square of Sevens, and the Parallelogram." Its... more...

NARRATIVE. The small city of Raleigh, North Carolina, it is known, is the capital of the State, situated in the interior, and containing about thirty six hundred inhabitants. Here lived MR. SHERWOOD HAYWOOD, a man of considerable respectability, a planter, and the cashier of a bank. He owned three plantations, at the distances respectively of seventy-five, thirty, and three miles from his residence in... more...

INTRODUCTION On the banks of a shallow winding stream, traversing the region known as Middle Tennessee, on the last day of December, 1862, and on the first and second days of January, 1863, a great battle was fought,—a battle that marked the turning point of the Civil War. Stone’s River, as the North designated it, or Murfreesboro,—to give it the Southern name,—has hitherto not been estimated... more...

THE HOME IN ALSACE In the southwestern corner of the domains of Kaiser Bill, in a fair district to which he has no more right than a highwayman has to his victim's wallet, there is a quaint old house built of gray stone and covered with a clinging vine. In the good old days when Alsace was a part of France the old house stood there and was the scene of joy and plenty. In these evil days when... more...

TWENTY YEARS OF BALKAN TANGLE CHAPTER ONE PICKING UP THE THREADS It was in Cetinje in August, 1900, that I first picked up a thread of the Balkan tangle, little thinking how deeply enmeshed I should later become, and still less how this tangle would ultimately affect the whole world. Chance, or the Fates, took me Near Eastward. Completely exhausted by constant attendance on an invalid relative, the... more...

In old tales they tell us many wonders of heroes and of high courage, of glad feasting, of wine and of mourning; and herein ye shall read of the marvellous deeds and of the strife of brave men. There grew up in Burgundy a noble maiden, in no land was a fairer. Kriemhild was her name. Well favoured was the damsel, and by reason of her died many warriors. Doughty knights in plenty wooed her, as was meet,... more...

CHAPTER ONE Beatrix smiled a little wearily. Intimate friends are sometimes cloying, and she felt a certain irritation rising within her, as she watched Sally's bright face under her French toque, and listened to the easy stream of chatter which issued from Sally's lips. Sally had never faced such a crisis as the one confronting Beatrix, that day. Moreover, she had dimples, and it was... more...