ACRES OF DIAMONDS WHEN going down the Tigris and Euphrates rivers many years ago with a party of English travelers I found myself under the direction of an old Arab guide whom we hired up at Bagdad, and I have often thought how that guide resembled our barbers in certain mental characteristics. He thought that it was not only his duty to guide us down those rivers, and do what he was paid for doing,... more...

INTRODUCTION When in October, 1870, I sailed into the harbour of Apia, Samoa, in the ill-fated ALBATROSS, Mr Louis Becke was gaining his first experiences of island life as a trader on his own account by running a cutter between Apia and Savai'i. It was rather a notable moment in Apia, for two reasons. In the first place, the German traders were shaking in their shoes for fear of what the French... more...

EARLY DAYS IN BOSTON When the report of Franklin's death reached Paris, he received, among other marks of respect, this significant honor by one of the revolutionary clubs: in the café where the members met, his bust was crowned with oak-leaves, and on the pedestal below was engraved the single word vir. This simple encomium, calling to mind Napoleon's This is a man after meeting Goethe,... more...

CHAPTER I. LIFE ON A COTTON PLANTATION. * * * * * BIRTH—SOLD IN A RICHMOND SLAVE PEN. I was born in Virginia, in 1832, near Charlottesville, in the beautiful valley of the Rivanna river. My father was a white man and my mother a negress, the slave of one John Martin. I was a mere child, probably not more than six years of age, as I remember, when my mother, two brothers and myself were... more...

CARLYLE. The new library edition of Mr. Carlyle's works may be taken for the final presentation of all that the author has to say to his contemporaries, and to possess the settled form in which he wishes his words to go to those of posterity who may prove to have ears for them. The canon is definitely made up. The golden Gospel of Silence is effectively compressed in thirty fine volumes. After all... more...

ESSAY I. REMARKS UPON THE SYMBOLS OF THEREPRODUCTIVE POWERS. ROM the investigations and researches of the learned, there appears to be no doubt but that the most ancient of all superstitions was that in which Nature was contemplated chiefly under the attribute or property of fecundity; the symbols of the reproductive power being those under which its prolific potencies were exhibited. It is not because... more...

My maiden name was Marthy Cannary. I was born in Princeton, Missourri, May 1st, 1852. Father and mother were natives of Ohio. I had two brothers and three sisters, I being the oldest of the children. As a child I always had a fondness for adventure and out-door exercise and especial fondness for horses which I began to ride at an early age and continued to do so until I became an expert rider being... more...

AURELIAN. The record which follows, is by the hand of me, Nicomachus, once the happy servant of the great Queen of Palmyra, than whom the world never saw a queen more illustrious, or a woman adorned with brighter virtues. But my design is not to write her eulogy, or to recite the wonderful story of her life. That task requires a stronger and a more impartial hand than mine. The life of Zenobia by... more...

SECTION 1 Of the Nature of Flatland I call our world Flatland, not because we call it so, but to make its nature clearer to you, my happy readers, who are privileged to live in Space. Imagine a vast sheet of paper on which straight Lines, Triangles, Squares, Pentagons, Hexagons, and other figures, instead of remaining fixed in their places, move freely about, on or in the surface, but without the power... more...

CHAPTER I PLANNING A DINNER "That's the way to line 'em out, Ned!" "Go on now! Take another! You can get home!" "Wow! That wins the game! Hurrah for Ned Wilding!" Those were some of the shouts, amid a multitude of others, that came from scores of boyish throats as they watched the baseball game between the Darewell High School and the Lakeville Preparatory Academy. The... more...