FOREWORD Dear Geoffrey Whitworth,—Considering for how many ages how many clever people have been complaining of their publishers, you might have supposed that no device for getting one of them into a scrape could have been left untried. Yet, so far as I can remember, no author has had the bright idea of denouncing his publisher, particularly, and by name, as accessory before the fact. I am willing to... more...

"I'm washed up," Preston growled bitterly. "They made a postman out of me. Me—a postman!" He crumpled the assignment memo into a small, hard ball and hurled it at the bristly image of himself in the bar mirror. He hadn't shaved in three days—which was how long it had been since he had been notified of his removal from Space Patrol Service and his transfer to Postal... more...

PREFACE. The public are here presented with the last literary attempt of an author, whose fame has been uncommonly extensive, and whose talents have probably been most admired, by the persons by whom talents are estimated with the greatest accuracy and discrimination. There are few, to whom her writings could in any case have given pleasure, that would have wished that this fragment should have been... more...

THE STRUGGLE FOR LIFE AMONG LANGUAGES. A distinguished Positivist friend of mine, who is in most matters a practical man of the world, astonished me greatly the other day at Venice, by the grave remark that Italian was destined to be the language of the future. I found on inquiry he had inherited the notion direct from Auguste Comte, who justified it on the purely sentimental and unpractical ground... more...

CHAPTER I THE DECLINE OF POST-AUGUSTAN POETRY During the latter years of the principate of Augustus a remarkable change in literary methods and style begins to make itself felt. The gradual extinction of the great luminaries is followed by a gradual disappearance of originality and of the natural and easy-flowing style whose phrases and felicities adorn, without overloading or obscuring the sense. In... more...

Preface. This tale is founded chiefly on facts furnished by the Postmaster-General’s Annual Reports, and gathered, during personal intercourse and investigation, at the General Post-Office of London and its Branches. It is intended to illustrate—not by any means to exhaust—the subject of postal work, communication, and incident throughout the Kingdom. I have to render my grateful acknowledgments... more...

Possession     Scene.—The Everlasting Habitations It is evening (or so it seems), and to the comfortably furnished Victorian drawing-room a middle-aged maid-servant in cap and apron brings a lamp, and proceeds to draw blinds and close curtains. To do this she passes the fire-place, where before a pleasantly bright hearth sits, comfortably sedate, an elderly lady whose countenance and attitude... more...

SCARLET LIGHTS This story presents the fulfillment of an extraordinary prophecy made one night, suddenly and dramatically, at a gathering of New Yorkers, brought together for hilarious purposes, including a little supper, in the Washington Square apartment of Bobby Vallis—her full name was Roberta. There were soft lights and low divans and the strumming of a painted ukulele that sang its little... more...

PORZIA Scene: A portion of the house, terrace and garden of Rizzio on his wedding day at Naples. It is so situated as to command a view of the city, the blue Bay with Capri set like a topaz in it, the Vesuvian coast, and the Mountain itself—rising like a calm though unappeasable monitor against the land's too sensual enchantment. The house, a white corner of which is visible along the right, has... more...

INTRODUCTION No one can look at a map of the Iberian Peninsula without being struck by the curious way in which it is unequally divided between two independent countries. Spain occupies by far the larger part of the Peninsula, leaving to Portugal only a narrow strip on the western seaboard some one hundred miles wide and three hundred and forty long. Besides, the two countries are separated the one... more...