I THE BOOK OF FOOD Nobody knows what starts the sap along the twigs of a very young, tender, and green woman's nature. In my case it was Samuel Foster Crittenden, though how could he have counted on the amount of Grandmother Nelson that was planted deep in my disposition, ready to spring up and bear fruit as soon as I was brought in direct acquaintance with a seed-basket and a garden hoe? Also why... more...

CHAPTER I. CHÂTEAU DE CHAMBORD. We walked through the empty galleries and deserted rooms where spiders spin their cobwebs over the salamanders of Francis the First. One is overcome by a feeling of distress at the sight of this poverty which has no grandeur. It is not absolute ruin, with the luxury of blackened and mouldy débris, the delicate embroidery of flowers, and the drapery of waving vines... more...

CHAPTER I THE DEGREE CEREMONY The streets of Oxford are seldom dull in term time, but a stranger who chances to pass through them between the hours of nine and ten on the morning of a degree day, will be struck and perhaps perplexed by their unwonted animation. He will find the quads of the great block of University buildings, which lie between the 'Broad' and the Radcliffe Square, alive with... more...

PART I. THE CHRISTIAN’S WARFARE. I would like to have you open your Bible at the first epistle of John, fifth chapter, fourth and fifth verses: “Whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world: and this is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith. Who is he that overcometh the world, but he that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God?” When a battle is fought, all are anxious to know... more...

CHAPTER I. THE IDEA SUGGESTED.   "There are no such peaches this side of New Jersey; and you can't get them, for love or money, at the stores. All we have to do is, to fill our pockets, and keep our mouths closed—till the peaches are ripe enough to eat," said Robert Shuffles, the older and the larger of two boys, who had just climbed over the high fence that surrounded the fine garden... more...

CHAPTER I. It is said that an old sailor looking at the first ocean steamer, exclaimed, "There's an end to seamanship." More correctly he might have predicted the end of the romance of ocean travel. Steam abridges time and space to such a degree that the world grows rapidly prosaic. Countries once distant and little known are at this day near and familiar. Railways on land and steamships... more...

CHAPTER I In Which Most of Us Plead Guilty to the Charge of "Nerves." NERVOUS FOLK Who's Who Whenever the subject of "nerves" is mentioned most people begin trying to prove an alibi. The man who is nervous and knows that he is nervous, realizes that he needs help, but the man who has as yet felt no lack of stability in himself is quite likely to be impatient with that whole class... more...

CHAPTER I. In those days, Santa Fé, New Mexico, was an undergrown, decrepit, out-at-elbows ancient hidalgo of a town, with not a scintillation of prosperity or grandeur about it, except the name of capital. It was two hundred and seventy years old; and it had less than five thousand inhabitants. It was the metropolis of a vast extent of country, not destitute of natural wealth; and it consisted of a... more...

OLD SALTS The lure of the sea prevailed, and at nineteen I shipped for a four-months' fishing trip on the Newfoundland Banks. These banks are not the kind that slope toward some gentle stream where the weary fisherman can rest between bites, protected from the sun by the shade of an overhanging tree; they are thirty to forty fathoms beneath the surface of the Atlantic Ocean, a thousand miles out... more...

CHAPTER I THE CASTAWAYS The second night north of the Zambezi, as well as the first, the little tramp rescue steamer had run out many miles into the offing and laid-to during the hours of darkness. The vicinity of the coral reefs that fringe the southeast coast of Africa is decidedly undesirable on moonless nights. When the Right Honorable the Earl of Avondale came out of his close, hot stateroom into... more...