CHAPTER I THE NEW ERA—SOME LEADING WITNESSES"The epoch ends, the world is still,The age has talked and worked its fill; The famous men of war have fought,The famous speculators thought. See on the cumbered plain,Clearing a stage,Scattering the past about,Comes the New Age.Bards make new poems;Thinkers, new schools;Statesmen, new systems;Critics, new rules." MATTHEW ARNOLD. India is a land of... more...

INTRODUCTORY. The problem of the genesis of species stated.—Nature of its probable solution.—Importance of the question.—Position here defended.—Statement of the Darwinian Theory.—Its applicability to details of geographical distribution; to rudimentary structures; to homology; to mimicry, &c.—Consequent utility of the theory.—Its wide acceptance.—Reasons for this, other than, and... more...

LETTERS OF A WOMAN HOMESTEADER I Burnt Fork, Wyoming, April 18, 1909. Dear Mrs. Coney,— Are you thinking I am lost, like the Babes in the Wood? Well, I am not and I'm sure the robins would have the time of their lives getting leaves to cover me out here. I am 'way up close to the Forest Reserve of Utah, within half a mile of the line, sixty miles from the railroad. I was twenty-four hours... more...

CHAPTER I It began with Jerry’s finishing off all the olives that were left, “like a pig would do,” as Greg said. His finishing the olives left us the bottle, of course, and there is only one natural thing to do with an empty olive-bottle when you’re on a water picnic. That is, to write a message as though you were a shipwrecked mariner, and seal it up in the bottle and chuck it as far out as... more...

DUMAS IN ITALY.[Souvenirs de Voyage en Italie, parALEXANDRE DUMAS. 5 vols. duod.]France has lately sent forth her poets in great force, to travel, and to write travels. Delamartine, Victor Hugo, Alexandre Dumas, and others, have been forth in the high-ways and the high-seas, observing, portraying, poetizing, romancing. The last-mentioned of these, M. Dumas, a dramatist very ingenious in the... more...

OUR FRIEND THE DOG I I have lost, within these last few days, a little bull-dog. He had just completed the sixth month of his brief existence. He had no history. His intelligent eyes opened to look out upon the world, to love mankind, then closed again on the cruel secrets of death. The friend who presented me with him had given him, perhaps by antiphrasis, the startling name of Pelléas. Why... more...

CHAPTER I In this modern industrial civilization of which we are sometimes wont to boast, a certain glacier-like process may be observed. The bewildered, the helpless—and there are many—are torn from the parent rock, crushed, rolled smooth, and left stranded in strange places. Thus was Edward Bumpus severed and rolled from the ancestral ledge, from the firm granite of seemingly stable and lasting... more...

Santa Claus lives in the Laughing Valley, where stands the big, rambling castle in which his toys are manufactured. His workmen, selected from the ryls, knooks, pixies and fairies, live with him, and every one is as busy as can be from one year's end to another. It is called the Laughing Valley because everything there is happy and gay. The brook chuckles to itself as it leaps rollicking between... more...

PREFACE In spite of a lapse of sixty years, the historian who attempts to portray the era of Lincoln is still faced with almost impossible demands and still confronted with arbitrary points of view. It is out of the question, in a book so brief as this must necessarily be, to meet all these demands or to alter these points of view. Interests that are purely local, events that did not with certainty... more...

ANNUAL MEETING.Place.Springfield, Mass., is not only one of the most beautiful cities in New England, but is especially adapted for a great convention like the Fifty-fourth Annual gathering of the American Missionary Association. With cordial hospitality the members of the churches and citizens of Springfield have opened their homes and hearts to welcome the delegates, life members, officers and... more...