This volume, while it is complete in itself, is also the first of a trilogy, the scope of which is suggested in the prologue. The story of scientific discovery has its own epic unity—a unity of purpose and endeavour—the single torch passing from hand to hand through the centuries; and the great moments of science when, after long labour, the pioneers saw their accumulated facts falling into a... more...

APOLOGIA PRO SCRIPTIS MEIS [The APOLOGIA which follows needs, perhaps, a word of explanation, not to clear up Mr. Moore's text—that is as delightful, as irrelevantly definite, as paradoxically clear as anything this present wearer of the Ermine of English Literature has ever written—but to explain why it was written and why it is published. When the present publisher, who is hereinafter, in... more...

CHAPTER I. Where the great highway of the Sierras nears the summit, and the pines begin to show sterile reaches of rock and waste in their drawn-up files, there are signs of occasional departures from the main road, as if the weary traveller had at times succumbed to the long ascent, and turned aside for rest and breath again. The tired eyes of many a dusty passenger on the old overland coach have... more...

THE STAR-EYED DEIRDRE In olden days, when many Kings reigned throughout the Green Island of Erin, none was greater than the great Concobar. So fair was his realm that poets sang its beauty, and such the wonder of his palace that the sweetest songs of Erin were of its loveliness. In a castle of this fair realm dwelt Felim, a warrior and harper dear unto the King. And it was told him that Concobar with... more...

This time two hundred years ago—in the beginning of January, 1666—those of our forefathers who inhabited this great and ancient city, took breath between the shocks of two fearful calamities: one not quite past, although its fury had abated; the other to come. Within a few yards of the very spot on which we are assembled, so the tradition runs, that painful and deadly malady, the plague, appeared... more...

BEHIND THE TIMES. My first interview with Dr. James Winter was under dramatic circumstances. It occurred at two in the morning in the bedroom of an old country house. I kicked him twice on the white waistcoat and knocked off his gold spectacles, while he with the aid of a female accomplice stifled my angry cries in a flannel petticoat and thrust me into a warm bath. I am told that one of my parents,... more...

CHAPTER I THE RECEPTION "And it's somewhere there in fairyland——It's where the rainbow ends!" Marjorie Wilkinson hummed softly to herself as she skipped from place to place, adding the finishing touches to the effect she and her committee had planned. It was the first Saturday of the regular fall term at Miss Allen's Boarding School. The girls were back again in their old... more...

The cemetery of Père Lachaise is the Westminster Abbey of Paris. Both are the dwellings of the dead; but in one they repose in green alleys and beneath the open sky—in the other their resting place is in the shadowy aisle and beneath the dim arches of an ancient abbey. One is a temple of nature; the other a temple of art. In one the soft melancholy of the scene is rendered still more touching by the... more...

1640-1750 The Annals of Music in America during the first hundred years contain very little that would seem to be of any importance to the musicians of today. Nevertheless it is as interesting to note the beginnings of music in this newly settled country as to watch the appearance of the baby's first tooth. The first settlement at Plymouth took place in 1620, and we find that in 1640 the colonists... more...

PART I Once there was a great noise in our house,—a thumping and battering and grating. It was my own self dragging my big trunk down from the garret. I did it myself because I wanted it done. If I had said, "Halicarnassus, will you fetch my trunk down?" he would have asked me what trunk? and what did I want of it? and would not the other one be better? and couldn't I wait till after... more...