The 15th day of November, in the year of our Lord 1577, Master Francis Drake, with a fleet of five ships and barks, and to the number of 164 men, gentlemen and sailors, departed from Plymouth, giving out his pretended voyage for Alexandria. But the wind falling contrary, he was forced the next morning to put into Falmouth Haven, in Cornwall, where such and so terrible a tempest took us, as few men have... more...

THE EARRING. "Come oot o' the gutter, ye nickum!" cried, in harsh, half-masculine voice, a woman standing on the curbstone of a short, narrow, dirty lane, at right angles to an important thoroughfare, itself none of the widest or cleanest. She was dressed in dark petticoat and print wrapper. One of her shoes was down at the heel, and discovered a great hole in her stocking. Had her black... more...

SIR HARRY HOTSPUR.  Sir Harry Hotspur of Humblethwaite was a mighty person in Cumberland, and one who well understood of what nature were the duties, and of what sort the magnificence, which his position as a great English commoner required of him. He had twenty thousand a year derived from land. His forefathers had owned the same property in Cumberland for nearly four centuries, and an estate nearly... more...

PREFACE In literature there have been romantic pirates, gentlemanly pirates, kind-hearted pirates, even humorous pirates—in fact, all sorts and conditions of pirates. In life there was only one kind. In this book that kind appears. Several presentations—in the guise of novels—of pirates, the like of which never existed on land or sea, have recently appeared. A perusal of these interesting... more...

Chapter One. Auntie and her Darling. “Don’t eat too much marmalade, Sydney dear. It may make you bilious.” “Oh, no, auntie dear, I’ll be careful.” “You have a great deal of butter on your bread, dear?” “Yes, auntie; that’s the beauty of it Miller says—” “Who is Miller, Syd dear?” “Our chemistry chap at Loamborough. He shows us how when you mix acids and alkalis together... more...

INTRODUCTORY NOTE Sir Humphrey Gilbert, the founder of the first English colony in North America, was born about 1539, the son of a Devonshire gentleman, whose widow afterward married the father of Sir Walter Raleigh. He was educated at Eton and Oxford, served under Sir Philip Sidney's father in Ireland, and fought for the Netherlands against Spain. After his return he composed a pamphlet urging... more...

On the 30th November, 1858, Jagadis Chunder was born, in a respectable Hindu family, which hails from village Rarikhal, situated in the Vikrampur Pargana of the Dacca District, in Bengal. He passed his boyhood at Faridpur, where his father, the late Babu Bhugwan Chunder Bose, a member of the then Subordinate Executive Service was the Sub-Divisional Officer; and it was there that he derived "the... more...

James Young Simpson, who will ever be remembered as the discoverer of the pain-annulling power of chloroform, was born in the year 1811, at a period when there was room for a hero in the practice of the healing art in the British Islands. It is true that in the seventeenth century Harvey had laid bare the great fact of the circulation of the blood and the practical Thomas Sydenham had swept aside the... more...

NOTICE It has been constantly observed by writers of travels that to gain credence for any of the strange incidents of their journeys, they have been compelled to omit many of the most eventful passages of their lives. "The gentlemen," and still more the ladies, "who live at home at ease" take, indeed, but little account of those adventures which are the daily lot of more precarious... more...

CHAPTER I. OF THE LINEAGE AND CONDITION OF SIR JOHN CONSTANTINE. "I have laboured to make a covenant with myself, that affection may not press upon judgment: for I suppose there is no man, that hath any apprehension of gentry or nobleness, but his affection stands to a continuance of a noble name and house, and would take hold of a twig or twine-thread to uphold it: and yet time hath his... more...