MAURINE PART I.I sat and sewed, and sang some tender tune,Oh, beauteous was that morn in early June!Mellow with sunlight, and with blossoms fair:The climbing rose‑tree grew about me there,And checked with shade the sunny porticoWhere, morns like this, I came to read, or sew. I heard the gate click, and a firm quick treadUpon the walk. No need to turn my head;I would... more...

Plans. It was the old story of woman comforting man in his affliction; the trouble in this instance appearing in the shape of a long blue envelope addressed to himself in his own handwriting. Poor young poet! He had no more appetite for eggs and bacon that morning; he pushed aside even his coffee, and buried his head in his hands. “Back again!” he groaned. “Always back, and back, and back, and... more...

BRIEF BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827) is widely considered to be one of the pre-eminent classical music figures of the Western world. This German musical genius created numerous works that are firmly entrenched in the repertoire. Except for a weakness in composing vocal and operatic music (to which he himself admitted, notwithstanding a few vocal works like the opera... more...

THE first thing which attracted my attention to the man was the shock of white hair above the lean young face. But for this, I should not have looked twice at him: long, spare, and stooping, a shabby figure, he crouched over a cup of coffee in a corner of the dingy restaurant, at fretful enmity with the world; typical, I should have said, of the furtive London nondescript. But that white hair startled... more...

INTRODUCTION.Should you ask me, whence these stories?Whence these legends and traditions,With the odors of the forest,With the dew and damp of meadows,With the curling smoke of wigwams,With the rushing of great rivers,With their frequent repetitions,And their wild reverberations,As of thunder in the mountains?10I should answer, I should tell you,"From the forests and the prairies,From the great... more...

INTRODUCTORY Immediately after Lincoln's re-election to the Presidency, in an off-hand speech, delivered in response to a serenade by some of his admirers on the evening of November 10, 1864, he spoke as follows: "It has long been a grave question whether any government not too strong for the liberties of its people can be strong enough to maintain its existence in great emergencies. On this... more...

CHAPTER I THE GIRL-QUEEN AND HER KINGDOM Rather more than one mortal lifetime, as we average life in these later days, has elapsed since that June morning of 1837, when Victoria of England, then a fair young princess of eighteen, was roused from her tranquil sleep in the old palace at Kensington, and bidden to rise and meet the Primate, and his dignified associates the Lord Chamberlain and the royal... more...

Dot Calliper had come out on the mountain-side, with all the rest of them, after blackberries. She had picked her little pail full industriously, but she was too fat and too small to climb any further among the rocks and stumps and bushes, so they had left her there, in the shade of the great chestnut-tree, to watch the milk-pails. Not that there was any milk in them just now, for all three of them... more...

CHAPTER 1. SUPPLY AND DEMAND. For years there has been a belief that the supply of fur-bearing animals would soon be inadequate to the demand. This belief is well founded and is apparent when the fact is known that the natural haunts and homes of the fur-producing animals are becoming less each year. The draining of swamps and marshes is destroying the homes and breeding places of muskrat and to a... more...

THE POT OF GOLD. The Flower family lived in a little house in a broad grassy meadow, which sloped a few rods from their front door down to a gentle, silvery river. Right across the river rose a lovely dark green mountain, and when there was a rainbow, as there frequently was, nothing could have looked more enchanting than it did rising from the opposite bank of the stream with the wet, shadowy mountain... more...