CHAPTER I With what a strange thrill I look out from my stateroom window, early one April morning, and catch a glimpse of the flashing light on one of the green promontories of the Golden Gate! I dress hurriedly and run out to find that a light is flaming on the other promontory, and that we are entering the great Bay of San Francisco. It has taken a long preparation to give me the feeling of pride and... more...

IN WHICH HE BUYS A CHRISTMAS TREE There was never in the world a better fellow than Jimmy Bulstrode. If he had been poorer his generosities would have ruined him over and over again. He was always being taken in, was the recipient of hundreds of begging letters, which he hired another soft-hearted person to read. He offended charitable organizations by never passing a beggar's outstretched hand... more...

Is it possible that there are people quite free from curiosity? People who can pass on behind any one they see gazing earnestly and intently toward some unknown object without feeling an impulse to stop, to follow the direction of the other's eyes, to discover what odd thing he may be looking at? For my part, if I were asked whether I counted myself among that class of cold natures, I do not know... more...

From the moment that Jimmie Harding came into the office, he created an atmosphere. We were a tired lot. Most of us had been in the government service for years, and had been ground fine in the mills of departmental monotony. But Jimmie was young, and he wore his youth like a gay cockade. He flaunted it in our faces, and because we were so tired of our dull and desiccated selves, we borrowed of him,... more...

CHAPTER I When the French nation gradually came into existence among the ruins of the Roman civilization in Gaul, a new language was at the same time slowly evolved. This language, in spite of the complex influences which went to the making of the nationality of France, was of a simple origin. With a very few exceptions, every word in the French vocabulary comes straight from the Latin. The influence... more...

In the extremes of winter and summer, when the weather is either extraordinarily cold or hot, I confess to experiencing a peculiar sense of helplessness and vague uneasiness. I have a feeling that a trifling additional rise or fall of temperature, such as might be caused by any slight hitch in the machinery of the universe, would quite crowd mankind out of existence. To be sure, the hitch never has... more...

HANSA, THE LITTLE LAPP MAIDEN.BY KATHARINE LEE. Once upon a time, in a very small village on the borders of one of the great pine forests of Norway, there lived a wood-cutter, named Peder Olsen. He had built himself a little log-house, in which he dwelt with his twin boys, Olaf and Erik, and their little sister Olga. Merry, happy children were these three, full of life and health, and always ready for... more...

The reflective voyager, on his first sight of New York, is baffled when he attempts to catalogue his sensations. All is so completely in contrast with the capitals of Europe. The gloriously bright sky, air that drinks like champagne, the resultant springiness of life and movement, that overdoes itself in excitement and premature exhaustion, and the obtrusively visible defects of this surface... more...

THE VOTE THAT MADE THE PRESIDENT. At ten minutes past four o'clock on the second morning of the present month (March, 1877), the President of the Senate of the United States, in the presence of the two Houses of Congress, made this announcement: "The whole number of the electors appointed to vote for President and Vice-President of the United States is 369, of which a majority is 185. The... more...

AN ENCYCLOPÆDIA OF VENTILATION. "The House [of Commons] met to-day [27th April] after the Easter holidays—and honourable members, on entering, seemed highly to appreciate the unusual luxury of a little fresh air."—The Times, 28th April. The failure of some late attempts to ventilate public buildings invites me to set forth an Encyclopædia of ventilation—at a cheap rate, and in a... more...