PALACE OF THE KREMLIN (FEBRUARY 20th, A.D. 1598) PRINCE SHUISKY and VOROTINSKY VOROTINSKY. To keep the city's peace, that is the taskEntrusted to us twain, but you forsoothHave little need to watch; Moscow is empty;The people to the Monastery have flockedAfter the patriarch. What thinkest thou?How will this trouble end? SHUISKY. How will it end?That is not hard to tell. A little moreThe multitude... more...

"RABBITS" Jimbo's governess ought to have known better—but she didn't. If she had, Jimbo would never have met with the adventures that subsequently came to him. Thus, in a roundabout sort of way, the child ought to have been thankful to the governess; and perhaps, in a roundabout sort of way, he was. But that comes at the far end of the story, and is doubtful at best; and in the... more...

OLD FATHER TIME. "Professor," said May, turning on the sofa where she was lying, "Jack has brought me a calendar that runs for ever so many years. You know the doctor says I'll not be well for two whole years, or perhaps three. I have been wondering what month among them all I shall be able to run about in; and then I began to think who could have made the first calendar, and what led... more...

INTRODUCTION Polar exploration is at once the cleanest and most isolated way of having a bad time which has been devised. It is the only form of adventure in which you put on your clothes at Michaelmas and keep them on until Christmas, and, save for a layer of the natural grease of the body, find them as clean as though they were new. It is more lonely than London, more secluded than any monastery, and... more...

My impatience to inhabit the Hermitage not permitting me to wait until the return of fine weather, the moment my lodging was prepared I hastened to take possession of it, to the great amusement of the 'Coterie Holbachaque', which publicly predicted I should not be able to support solitude for three months, and that I should unsuccessfully return to Paris, and live there as they did. For my... more...

PREFACE BY LORD STAIR Two excellent accounts of the beautiful Nancy Stair have already been published; the first by Mrs. George Opie, in the Scots News, giving a detailed account of the work on the burnside, and a more recent one by Professor Erskine, of our own University, which is little more than a critical dissertation upon Nancy as a poet; the heart of the matter with him being to commend her... more...

SCENE ICromwell'shouse at Ely, about the year 1639. An early summer evening. The window of the room opens on to a smooth lawn, used for bowling, and a garden full of flowers.Oliver'swife,Elizabeth Cromwell, is sitting at the table, sewing. In a chair by the open windowMrs. Cromwell, his mother, is reading. She is eighty years of age.Mrs. Cromwell:Oliver troubles me, persuading everywhere.... more...

CHAPTER I MOTHER ETIENNE'S FARM "Oh Grandfather, tell us a story, do. You know, the one you began the other evening about Mother Etienne's big farm. You remember. The weather is so bad and we can't go out. Go on, Grandfather, please." Coaxingly the three children clung round their grandfather, looking at him beseechingly. He adoring the children as he did, loved to hear them... more...

Richard made an early start that morning in search of employment, and duplicated the failure of the previous day. Nobody wanted him. If nobody wanted him in the village where he was born and bred, a village of counting-rooms and workshops, was any other place likely to need him? He had only one hope, if it could be called a hope; at any rate, he had treated it tenderly as such and kept it for the last.... more...

CHAP. I. ROUTE FROM PARIS TO MORTAGNE.--EXCURSION TO LA TRAPPE.--STATE OF THE ORDER SINCE THE RESTORATION IN 1814.--ITS FOUNDATION AND RULES UNDER THE ABBE DE RANCE. I performed this journey during the months of June, July, August, and September, a distance of near one thousand miles, and had the singular good fortune to enjoy the finest weather possible. The perusal of Madame de La... more...