CHAPTER I “BACK TO THE COLLEGE AGAIN” “Oh, Rachel Morrison, am I too late for the four-ten train?” Betty Wales, pink-cheeked and breathless, her yellow curls flying under her dainty lingerie hat, and her crisp white skirts held high to escape the dust of the station platform, sank down beside Rachel on a steamer trunk that the Harding baggage-men had been too busy or too accommodating to move... more...

BOOK I SYLVIA AS WIFE 1. I am telling the story of Sylvia Castleman. I should prefer to tell it without mention of myself; but it was written in the book of fate that I should be a decisive factor in her life, and so her story pre-supposes mine. I imagine the impatience of a reader, who is promised a heroine out of a romantic and picturesque "society" world, and finds himself beginning with the... more...

FROM THE ASHES The sun rose over Plum Beach to shine down on a scene of confusion and wreckage that might have caused girls less determined and courageous than those who belonged to the Manasquan Camp Fire of the Camp Fire Girls of America to feel that there was only one thing to do—pack up and move away. But, though the camp itself was in ruins, there were no signs of discouragement among the... more...

CHAPTER I. THE LANE. The rector sat on the box of his carriage, driving his horses toward his church, the grand old abbey-church of Glaston. His wife was inside, and an old woman—he had stopped on the road to take her up—sat with her basket on the foot-board behind. His coachman sat beside him; he never took the reins when his master was there. Mr. Bevis drove like a gentleman, in an easy,... more...

MILTON'S TERCENTENARY It is right that this anniversary should be kept in all English-speaking lands. Milton is as far away from us in time as Dante was from him; destructive criticism has been busy with his great poem; formidable rivals of his fame have arisen—Dryden and Pope, Wordsworth and Byron, Tennyson and Browning, not to speak of lesser names—poets whom we read perhaps oftener... more...

PREFACE. The Author, owing to circumstances, has had access to authentic documents and facts, relating to one of the most remarkable shipwrecks which have ever happened, that of the troop-ships Runnymede and Briton, on the morning of the 12th of November, 1844, upon one of the Andaman Islands. In reading these, it struck him forcibly, that the circumstances, if thrown into the shape of a narrative,... more...

I He entered the backwoods village of Bytown literally on the wings of the wind. It whirled him along like a big snowflake, and dropped him at the door of Moody's "Sportsmen's Retreat," as if he were a New Year's gift from the North Pole. His coming seemed a mere chance; but perhaps there was something more in it, after all. At all events, you shall hear, if you will, the time... more...

1. Mr Bickersdyke Walks behind the Bowler's Arm Considering what a prominent figure Mr John Bickersdyke was to be in Mike Jackson's life, it was only appropriate that he should make a dramatic entry into it. This he did by walking behind the bowler's arm when Mike had scored ninety-eight, causing him thereby to be clean bowled by a long-hop. It was the last day of the Ilsworth cricket... more...

INTRODUCTION One of the most vital and pregnant books in our modern literature, “Sartor Resartus” is also, in structure and form, one of the most daringly original. It defies exact classification. It is not a philosophic treatise. It is not an autobiography. It is not a romance. Yet in a sense it is all these combined. Its underlying purpose is to expound in broad outline certain ideas which lay at... more...

I.MILITARY PRISONERS. The cases of bad treatment of prisoners in Germany have been made known very widely. No one, I imagine, can wish to defend bad treatment of prisoners anywhere (even of criminal prisoners), and such a horrible state of things as that of Wittenberg during the typhus epidemic is a disgrace to human nature. But Mr. Lithgow Osborne says: “My whole impression of the camp authorities... more...