WITH THE VICEROY [August 2, 1879.] It is certainly a little intoxicating to spend a day with the Great Ornamental. You do not see much of him perhaps; but he is a Presence to be felt, something floating loosely about in wide epicene pantaloons and flying skirts, diffusing as he passes the fragrance of smile and pleasantry and cigarette. The air around him is laden with honeyed murmurs; gracious... more...

PROLOGUE I The officer lying back in the home-made chair tilted the peak of his cap over his eyes and let his book slip gently to the ground. A few moments later, after various unavailing waves of the hand, he pulled out a handkerchief of striking design and carefully adjusted it over his face. Then, with his hands dug deep in his pockets to remove even a square inch of skin from the ubiquitous fly, he... more...

It's natural to trust the unproven word of the fellow who's "on my side"—but the emotional moron is on no one's side, not even his own. Once, such an emotional moron could, at worst, hurt a few. But with the mighty, leashed forces Man employs now.... There were still, in 1968, a few people who were afraid of the nuclear power plant. Oldsters, in whom the term "atomic... more...

It is characteristic of this buoyant people that they pursue no man beyond the grave. "Let God be his judge!"—Even with the hundred thousand unfound, though greatly coveted, the hue and cry went no further than that. To the stranger or the guest the people of Coralio will relate the story of the tragic end of their former president; how he strove to escape from the country with the public... more...

CHAPTER I I MAKE NO EFFORT TO DEFEND MYSELF I am quite sure it was my Uncle Rilas who said that I was a fool. If memory serves me well he relieved himself of that conviction in the presence of my mother—whose brother he was—at a time when I was least competent to acknowledge his wisdom and most arrogant in asserting my own. I was a freshman in college: a fact—or condition, perhaps,—which should... more...

CHAPTER I. "I won't give you any farther trouble, I can find what I want myself." The sexton's wife looked at the gentleman in some little surprise, and then glanced at the bunch of huge keys which hung in the door she had just opened for the stranger. "That's right; you need not be uneasy, I shall not stay long, and here is something for your trouble." He pressed a piece... more...

PREFACE A preface to a play seems generally to be considered as a kind of closet-prologue, in which—if his piece has been successful—the author solicits that indulgence from the reader which he had before experienced from the audience: but as the scope and immediate object of a play is to please a mixed assembly in representation (whose judgment in the theatre at least is decisive,) its degree of... more...

CHAPTER I   LISA'S KNIGHT AND LISA'S SISTER It had come at last, the moment I had been thinking about for days. I was going to have him all to myself, the only person in the world I ever loved. He had asked me to sit out two dances, and that made me think he really must want to be with me, not just because I'm the "pretty girl's sister," but because I'm myself, Lisa... more...

"When we two partedIn silence and tears,Half broken-heartedTo sever for years." MUST I really go?" "I'm afraid it has come to that, Philippa! I believe I have kept you here too long already. You're ten years old now, growing a tall girl, and not learning half the things you ought to. I feel there's something wrong about you, but I don't know quite how to set it... more...

INTRODUCTORY NOTE ROBERT BROWNING stands, in respect to his origin and his career, in marked contrast to the two aristocratic poets beside whose dramas his "Blot in the 'Scutcheon" is here printed. His father was a bank clerk and a dissenter at a time when dissent meant exclusion from Society; the poet went neither to one of the great public schools nor to Oxford or Cambridge; and no... more...