CHAPTER I. AT HILTON SEMINARY. It was four o'clock in the afternoon on the opening day of the midwinter term at Hilton Seminary, a noted institution located in a beautiful old town of Western New York. A group of gay girls had just gathered in one of the pleasant and spacious recreation rooms and were chattering like the proverbial flock of magpies—exchanging merry greetings after their... more...

Immediately after noon, upon the 29th day of January, 1850, we east off from the wharf at the Navy Yard in Charlestown, Massachusetts, and with the pilot on board, proceeded to sea. But little time was allowed to send our adieus, for he soon left us, bearing with him some hasty scrawls, to the illegibility of one of which a very good friend of the writer can testify. Our commander was very anxious to... more...

CHAPTER I. o you think Katie Haydon is pretty—I don't?" and the speaker glanced at her own bright curls as she spoke. "Well, I don't know whether she is exactly pretty, but she always looks nice, and then she is so pleasant and merry, and——" "And so vain and stuck-up," put in the first speaker again. "Oh, how can you say so?" said another, a plain,... more...

GRACE DANTON. A low room, oblong in shape, three high narrow windows admitting the light through small, old-fashioned panes. Just at present there was not much to admit, for it was raining hard, and the afternoon was wearing on to dusk; but even the wet half-light showed you solid mahogany furniture, old-fashioned as the windows themselves, black and shining with age and polish; a carpet soft and... more...

CHAPTER I. "Kate," said Aunt Deborah to me as we sat with our feet on the fender one rainy afternoon—or, as we were in London, I should say one rainy morning—in June, "I think altogether, considering the weather and what not, it would be as well for you to give up this Ascot expedition, my dear." I own I felt more than half inclined to cry—most girls would have cried—but Aunt... more...

CHAPTER I.   t was the morning before the Twelfth, years ago, and nothing like unto Muirtown Station could have been found in all the travelling world. For Muirtown, as everybody knows, is the centre which receives the southern immigrants in autumn, and distributes them, with all their belongings of servants, horses, dogs, and luggage, over the north country from Athole to Sutherland. All night,... more...

CHAPTER I TWO YOUNG PEOPLE, A SHIP, AND A FISH The month was September and the place was in the neighbourhood of Bridgetown, in the island of Barbadoes. The seventeenth century was not seventeen years old, but the girl who walked slowly down to the river bank was three years its senior. She carried a fishing-rod and line, and her name was Kate Bonnet. She was a bright-faced, quick-moving young person,... more...

CHAPTER I Who could forget the Ochakee River, and the valley through which it flows! The river itself rises in one of those lost and nameless lakes in the Floridan central ridge, then is hidden at once in the live oak and cypress forests that creep inland from the coasts. But it can never be said truly to flow. Over the billiard-table flatness of that land it moves so slowly and silently that it gives... more...

KARL-LUDWIG SAND—1819 On the 22nd of March, 1819, about nine o'clock in the morning, a young man, some twenty-three or twenty-four years old, wearing the dress of a German student, which consists of a short frock-coat with silk braiding, tight trousers, and high boots, paused upon a little eminence that stands upon the road between Kaiserthal and Mannheim, at about three-quarters of the distance... more...

BRINGING UP KARI ari, the elephant, was five months old when he was given to me to take care of. I was nine years old and I could reach his back if I stood on tiptoe. He seemed to remain that high for nearly two years. Perhaps we grew together; that is probably why I never found out just how tall he was. He lived in a pavilion, under a thatched roof which rested on thick tree stumps so that it could... more...