INTRODUCTION LIFE OF BROWNING Robert Browning was born in Camberwell, London, May 7, 1812. He was contemporary with Tennyson, Dickens, Thackeray, Lowell, Emerson, Hawthorne, Darwin, Spencer, Huxley, Dumas, Hugo, Mendelssohn, Wagner, and a score of other men famous in art and science. Browning's good fortune began with his birth. His father, a clerk in the Bank of England, possessed ample means for... more...

PRELUDE An Hour in the Life of Two Modern Young People April, 1909.Lounging idly in the deserted little waiting-room was the usual shabby, bored, lonely ticket-seller, prodigiously indifferent to the grave beauty of the scene before him and to the throng of ancient memories jostling him where he stood. Without troubling to look at his watch, he informed the two young foreigners that they had a long... more...

CHAPTER I HUSBANDS AND WIFE. Brock was breakfasting out-of-doors in the cheerful little garden of the Hôtel Chatham. The sun streamed warmly upon the concrete floor of the court just beyond the row of palms and oleanders that fringed the rail against which his Herald rested, that he might read as he ran, so to speak. He was the only person having déjeuner on the "terrace," as he named it to... more...

ST. PATRICK'S PARENTAGE. ABOUT the middle of the fourth century a noble decurion named Calphurnius espoused Conchessa, the niece of St. Martin of Tours. Heaven blessed their union with several children, the youngest of whom was a boy, who received at his baptism the name of Succath, which in the Gaelic tongue signifies "valiant." Jocelin is responsible for the statement that the parents of... more...

CAPTAINS ALL Every sailorman grumbles about the sea, said the night-watchman, thoughtfully. It's human nature to grumble, and I s'pose they keep on grumbling and sticking to it because there ain't much else they can do. There's not many shore-going berths that a sailorman is fit for, and those that they are—such as a night-watchman's, for instance—wants such a good... more...

CHAPTER I "I hear that Janus Grubb is going to take a passel of gals on a tramp over the hills," observed the postmaster, helping himself to a cracker from the grocer's barrel. "Gals?" questioned the storekeeper. "Yes. There's a lot of mail here for the parties, mostly postals. Can't make much out of the postals, but some of the letters I can read through the... more...

THE WIFE'S STORY. I will tell you the story of my life, since you ask it; for, though the meaning of the life of any woman of my character would be the same, I believe, the facts of mine, being sharp and compressed, may make it, perhaps, more apparent. It will be enough for me to give you the history of one day,—that of our first coming to Newport; for it seems to me as if it held and spoke out... more...

CHAPTER 1 ITS ANTIQUITY Every boy or girl who has read the history of Joseph must often have wondered what kind of a country Egypt might be, and tried to picture to themselves the scenes so vividly suggested in the Bible story. It must have been a startling experience for the little shepherd boy, who, stolen from his home among the quiet hills of Canaan, so suddenly found himself an inmate of a palace,... more...

THE FOX JUMPS OVER THE PARSON’S GATE   The Huntsman blows his horn in the morn, When folks goes hunting, oh! When folks goes hunting, oh! When folks goes hunting, oh! The Huntsman blows his horn in the morn, When folks goes hunting, oh!         The Fox jumps over the Parson’s gate, And the Hounds all after him go, And the Hounds all after him go, And the Hounds all after him go.   But all my... more...

"ALL'S WELL"IThe illimitable leaping of the sea,The mouthing of his madness to the moon,The seething of his endless sorcery,His prophecy no power can attune,Swept over me as, on the sounding prowOf a great ship that steered into the stars,I stood and felt the awe upon my browOf death and destiny and all that mars.IIThe wind that blew from Cassiopeia castWanly upon my ear a rune that... more...