First day out.Weather horrible, uncertain and squally, but interesting.Developments promised.Feel fine. Smith's Log. Several tugs were persuasively nudging the Clan Macgregor out from her pier. Beside the towering flanks of the sea-monster, newest and biggest of her species, they seemed absurdly inadequate to the job. But they made up for their insignificance by self-important and fussy puffings... more...

PROLOGUE The older I get the more convinced I become that the most fascinating persons in this world are those elusive souls whom we know perfectly well but whom we never, as children say, "get to meet." They slip out of countries, or towns—or rooms even,—just before we arrive, leaving us with an inexplicable feeling of having been cheated of something that was rightfully and divinely ours.... more...

CHAPTER I. NAT "Please, sir, is this Plumfield?" asked a ragged boy of the man who opened the great gate at which the omnibus left him. "Yes. Who sent you?" "Mr. Laurence. I have got a letter for the lady." "All right; go up to the house, and give it to her; she'll see to you, little chap." The man spoke pleasantly, and the boy went on, feeling much cheered by the... more...

BENJAMIN ROBERT HAYDON PART I If it be true that the most important ingredient in the composition of the self-biographer is a spirit of childlike vanity, with a blend of unconscious egoism, few men have ever been better equipped than Haydon for the production of a successful autobiography. In naïve simplicity of temperament he has only been surpassed by Pepys, in fulness of self-revelation by... more...

CHAPTER I Motherless In the East End of London, more than a mile from St Paul's Cathedral, and lying near to the docks, there is a tangled knot of narrow streets and lanes, crossing and running into one another, with blind alleys and courts leading out of them, and low arched passages, and dark gullies, and unsuspected slums, hiding away at the back of the narrowest streets; forming altogether... more...

COLUMBUS DISCOVERS AMERICA Justin Winsor [Part of Chapter IX., “The Final Agreement and the First Voyage” from “Christopher Columbus and How He Received and Imparted the Spirit of Discovery,” copyright by Houghton, Mifflin & Co., Boston and New York, 1892.] So, everything being ready, on the 3rd of August, 1492, a half-hour before sunrise, he unmoored his little fleet in the stream, and,... more...

PREFACE To gather stones and fallen boughs is soon to ask, what may be done with them, can they be piled and fastened together for shelter? So begins architecture, with the hut as its first step, with the Alhambra, St. Peter's, the capitol at Washington, as its last. In like fashion the amassing of fact suggests the ordering of fact: when observation is sufficiently full and varied it comes to the... more...

PREFACE To a good many of us the inventor is the true hero for he multiplies the working value of life. He performs an old task with new economy, as when he devises a mowing-machine to oust the scythe; or he creates a service wholly new, as when he bids a landscape depict itself on a photographic plate. He, and his twin brother, the discoverer, have eyes to read a lesson that Nature has held for ages... more...

WOUTER VAN TWILLER It was in the year of our Lord 1629 that Mynheer Wouter Van Twiller was appointed Governor of the province of Nieuw Nederlandts, under the commission and control of their High Mightinesses the Lords States General of the United Netherlands, and the privileged West India Company. This renowned old gentleman arrived at New Amsterdam in the merry month of June, the sweetest month in all... more...

It is evening; the sun is setting, and the shepherd, who tends the flocks of little Mary's Papa, is, with his good little dog, driving the sheep to the fold, where they will rest in safety. That is his cottage which stands on the other side of the road.The tongs stood in the room where Mary oft staid,And the lantern gave light to the hall where she play'd.The table was placed in the corner... more...