PROLOGUE OF THE CIGAR DIVAN In the city of encounters, the Bagdad of the West, and, to be more precise, on the broad northern pavement of Leicester Square, two young men of five- or six-and-twenty met after years of separation.  The first, who was of a very smooth address and clothed in the best fashion, hesitated to recognise the pinched and shabby air of his companion. ‘What!’ he cried,... more...

CHAPTER I If Nature is infallible, there should be some philosophic or eugenic professor arise and explain why she made such a grievous error in the personal appearance, vocal qualities, and general gestures of the learned judge, astute politician and hopeful statesman, Hon. J. Woodworth-Granger and Mr. James Gollop, perigrinating drummer for a chocolate house. Either the Honorable Judge should have... more...

THE POETRY OF MADISON CAWEIN When a poet begins writing, and we begin liking his work, we own willingly enough that we have not, and cannot have, got the compass of his talent. We must wait till he has written more, and we have learned to like him more, and even then we should hesitate his definition, from all that he has done, if we did not very commonly qualify ourselves from the latest thing he has... more...

I. WITH DU MAURIER AND FRIENDS. "I well remember" my first meeting with du Maurier in the class-rooms of the famous Antwerp Academy. I was painting and blagueing, as one paints and blagues in the storm and stress period of one's artistic development. It had been my good fortune to commence my studies in Paris; it was there, in the atelier Gleyre, I had cultivated, I think I may say, very... more...

So the baby had a pet monster. And so nobody but baby could see it. And so a couple of men dropped out of thin air to check and see if the monster was licensed or not. So what's strange about that? Baby didn't cry all day, because he had a monster for a playmate. But I didn't know he had a playmate, and much less did I know it was a monster. The honest truth is that for the first time... more...

INTRODUCTION. The Ion is the shortest, or nearly the shortest, of all the writings which bear the name of Plato, and is not authenticated by any early external testimony. The grace and beauty of this little work supply the only, and perhaps a sufficient, proof of its genuineness. The plan is simple; the dramatic interest consists entirely in the contrast between the irony of Socrates and the... more...

CHAPTER I ANCESTRY 'My father and mother were both Kerry men,' as the saying goes in my native land, and better never stepped. It was my misfortune, but not my fault, that I was born at Bath and not in Kerry. However, my earliest recollection is of Dingle, for I was only three months old when I was taken back to Ireland, and up to that time I did not study the English question very deeply,... more...

FOREWORD I take up pen for this foreword with the fear of one who knows that he cannot do justice to his subject, and the trembling of one who would not, for a good deal, set down words unpleasing to the eye of him who wrote Green Mansions, The Purple Land, and all those other books which have meant so much to me. For of all living authors—now that Tolstoi has gone I could least dispense with W. H.... more...

On the southeastern coast of Massachusetts is a small village with which I was once familiarly acquainted. It differs little in its general aspect from other hamlets scattered along that shore. It has its one long, straggling street, plain and homelike, from which at two or three different points a winding lane leads off and ends abruptly in the water. Fifty years ago the village had a business... more...

It is said that the unfortunate Princess Charlotte of Belgium is to be taken over to Mexico, in the hope that a visit to the scenes of her former happiness may restore her reason. Her story brings back to memory a very sad and interesting page of our modern history. Princess Charlotte, the daughter of Leopold I., King of the Belgians, was the most accomplished and beautiful princess of her time. She... more...