CHAPTER IEARLY LIFE IN ALDEBURGH(1754-1780)Two eminent English poets who must be reckoned moderns though each produced characteristic verse before the end of the eighteenth century, George Crabbe and William Wordsworth, have shared the common fate of those writers who, possessing a very moderate power of self-criticism, are apparently unable to discriminate between their good work and their bad. Both... more...

Too long have Britain’s sons with proud disdainSurvey’d the gay Patrician’s titled train,Their various merit scann’d with eye severe,Nor learn’d to know the peasant from the peer:At length the Gothic ignorance is o’er,And vulgar brows shall scowl on LORDS no more;Commons shall shrink at each ennobled nod,And ev’ry lordling shine a demigod:By CRAVEN taught, the humbler herd shall know,How... more...

COWBOY YARNS The centipede runs across my head, The vinegaroon crawls in my bed, Tarantulas jump and scorpions play, The broncs are grazing far away, The rattlesnake gives his warning cry, And the coyotes sing their lullaby, While I sleep soundly beneath the sky. OUT WHERE THE WEST BEGINSOUT where the handclasp's a little stronger,Out where the smile dwells a little longer,That's where the... more...

OILING. (A Song In and Out of Season.) Excuse me, Sweetheart, if I smear,With wisdom learnt from ancient teachers,Now winter time once more is here,This grease upon your lengthy features!Behaving thus, your loyal friendNo whit encourages deception:Believe me, Fairest, in the endThis oil will better your complexion.Fairest, believe! Did you imagine in the bagTo sleep the sleep of Rip Van Winkle,Removed... more...

AUTHOR'S PREFACE Contemporary psychology has studied the purely reproductive imagination with great eagerness and success. The works on the different image-groups—visual, auditory, tactile, motor—are known to everyone, and form a collection of inquiries solidly based on subjective and objective observation, on pathological facts and laboratory experiments. The study of the creative or... more...

INTRODUCTION The contents of these volumes of 'Celebrated Crimes', as well as the motives which led to their inception, are unique. They are a series of stories based upon historical records, from the pen of Alexandre Dumas, pere, when he was not "the elder," nor yet the author of D'Artagnan or Monte Cristo, but was a rising young dramatist and a lion in the literary set and... more...

About the end of the year 1639, a troop of horsemen arrived, towards midday, in a little village at the northern extremity of the province of Auvergne, from the direction of Paris. The country folk assembled at the noise, and found it to proceed from the provost of the mounted police and his men. The heat was excessive, the horses were bathed in sweat, the horsemen covered with dust, and the party... more...

One September afternoon in 1751, towards half-past five, about a score of small boys, chattering, pushing, and tumbling over one another like a covey of partridges, issued from one of the religious schools of Chartres. The joy of the little troop just escaped from a long and wearisome captivity was doubly great: a slight accident to one of the teachers had caused the class to be dismissed half an hour... more...

CHAPTER I Before beginning our story, we must warn the reader that it will not be worth his while to make researches among contemporary or other records as to the personage whose name it bears. For in truth neither Marie Leroux, widow of Jacques Constantin, nor her accomplice, Claude Perregaud, was of sufficient importance to find a place on any list of great criminals, although it is certain that they... more...

CHAPTER I The beginning of the nineteenth century was a time of audacious enterprises and strange vicissitudes of fortune. Whilst Western Europe in turn submitted and struggled against a sub-lieutenant who made himself an emperor, who at his pleasure made kings and destroyed kingdoms, the ancient eastern part of the Continent, like mummies which preserve but the semblance of life, was gradually... more...