CHAPTER I—THE FEUDAL AGE It is a very common thing now-a-days to meet people who are going to "China," which can be reached by the Siberian railway in fourteen or fifteen days. This brings us at once to the question—What is meant by the term China? Taken in its widest sense, the term includes Mongolia, Manchuria, Eastern Turkestan, Tibet, and the Eighteen Provinces, the whole being... more...

CHAPTER I JIM LESLIE WRITES A LETTER In a fifth-story sitting room of a New York boarding house four youths were holding a discussion. The sitting room was large and square, and in the wildest disorder, which was, however, sublimated into a certain system by an illuminated device to the effect that one should "Have a Place for Everything, and then there'll be one Place you won't have to... more...

CHAPTER I The Bruised Reed The fair girl who was playing a banjo and singing to the wounded soldiers suddenly stopped, and, turning to the surgeon, whispered: “What’s that?” “It sounds like a mob——” With a common impulse they moved to the open window of the hospital and listened. On the soft spring air came the roar of excited thousands sweeping down the avenue from the Capitol toward the... more...

CHAPTER I Between two flames the man stood, overlooking the crowd. A soft breeze, playing about the torches, sent shadows billowing across the massed folk on the ground. Shrewdly set with an eye to theatrical effect, these phares of a night threw out from the darkness the square bulk of the man's figure, and, reflecting garishly upward from the naked hemlock of the platform, accentuated, as in... more...

The facilitation and abbreviation of mental labor is at the bottom of all mental progress. The reasoning faculties of Newton were not different in qualitative character from those of a ploughman; the difference lay in the extent to which they were exerted and the number of facts which could be treated. Every thinking being generalizes more or less, but it is the depth and extent of his generalizations... more...

Chapter I Julia Brabazon The gardens of Clavering Park were removed some three hundred yards from the large, square, sombre-looking stone mansion which was the country-house of Sir Hugh Clavering, the eleventh baronet of that name; and in these gardens, which had but little of beauty to recommend them, I will introduce my readers to two of the personages with whom I wish to make them acquainted in the... more...

While Professor Cargill lectured from the rostrum, Neal Pardeau prowled the dark auditorium. This, he knew, was the place to find them. Here was where they whispered and plotted and schemed—feeling safe in this pure, hard core of patriotism. Safe because Cargill was the Director of Education in the New State, just as Pardeau was the Director of Public Security. Safe because Cargill's lectures... more...

CHAPTER I. A TRANSITION PERIOD Politicians at Washington very generally failed to realize that the advent of President Hayes marked the dismissal of the issues of war and reconstruction. They regarded as an episode what turned out to be the close of an era. They saw, indeed, that public interest in the old issues had waned, but they were confident that this lack of interest was transient. They admitted... more...

The Clicking of Cuthbert The young man came into the smoking-room of the clubhouse, and flung his bag with a clatter on the floor. He sank moodily into an arm-chair and pressed the bell. "Waiter!" "Sir?" The young man pointed at the bag with every evidence of distaste. "You may have these clubs," he said. "Take them away. If you don't want them yourself, give them to... more...

The Himalayas. Who has not heard of the Himalayas—those Titanic masses of mountains that interpose themselves between the hot plains of India and the cold table-lands of Thibet—a worthy barrier between the two greatest empires in the world, the Mogul and the Celestial? The veriest tyro in geography can tell you that they are the tallest mountains on the surface of the earth; that their summits—a... more...