BED IN SUMMERIn winter I get up at nightAnd dress by yellow candle-light.In summer, quite the other way,I have to go to bed by day.I have to go to bed and seeThe birds still hopping on the tree,Or hear the grown-up people's feetStill going past me in the street.And does it not seem hard to you,When all the sky is clear and blue,And I should like so much to play,To have to go to bed by day?... more...

There were ripples of sunshine all tangled in the glowing scarlet of the geranium bed and dancing blithely over the grass. A world of melody in quivering bursts of happy song came from the spreading canopy of leaves overhead, and as an accompaniment, the wind laughed and whispered and kept the air in one continual smile with a kiss on its lips, born of supreme contentment in the summer loveliness. In... more...

THE LIFE OF PETRARCH. The family of Petrarch was originally of Florence, where his ancestors held employments of trust and honour. Garzo, his great-grandfather, was a notary universally respected for his integrity and judgment. Though he had never devoted himself exclusively to letters, his literary opinion was consulted by men of learning. He lived to be a hundred and four years old, and died, like... more...

ACT I An October night on the Syrian border of Egypt towards the end of the XXXIII Dynasty, in the year 706 by Roman computation, afterwards reckoned by Christian computation as 48 B.C. A great radiance of silver fire, the dawn of a moonlit night, is rising in the east. The stars and the cloudless sky are our own contemporaries, nineteen and a half centuries younger than we know them; but you would not... more...

INDUSTRIAL DESIGNING. A great many women have, or think they have, a taste for art. They can make a pretty sketch, or draw a landscape quite fairly, and so they think they will "take up" art as a profession. And nearly all of them fail of success. The trouble seems to be that they lack originality; they are mere copyists, and too often very poor reproducers of the things they copy. One branch... more...

INTRODUCTION. Humphry Davy was born at Penzance, in Cornwall, on the 17th of December, 1778, and died at Geneva on the 29th of May, 1829, at the age of fifty.  He was a philosopher who turned knowledge to wisdom; he was one of the foremost of our English men of science; and this book, written when he was dying, which makes Reason the companion of Faith, shows how he passed through the light of earth... more...

I. LOOKING INWARD. It is my habit to give an account to myself of the characters I meet with: can I give any true account of my own? I am a bachelor, without domestic distractions of any sort, and have all my life been an attentive companion to myself, flattering my nature agreeably on plausible occasions, reviling it rather bitterly when it mortified me, and in general remembering its doings and... more...

CHAPTER I. The sun sometimes shone brightly upon the little round panes of the ancient building, the Golden Cross, on the northern side of the square, which the people of Ratisbon call "on the moor"; sometimes it was veiled by gray clouds. A party of nobles, ecclesiastics, and knights belonging to the Emperor's train were just coming out. The spring breeze banged behind them the door of... more...

THE CHIEF ENGINEER It was a dark night in July — very dark. There was no moon and clouds hid the stars. We were sitting by the camp fire. Bige had just kicked the burning logs together so that a shower of sparks shot straight up toward the tree-tops, indicating that there was no wind, when he said, "If you want to make that picture of deer this is just the kind of a night to go for it. You... more...

THEODOR BILLROTH, PROFESSOR OF SURGERY AT VIENNA. The well known surgeon, Theodor Billroth, was born on the island of Rügen in 1829. He showed great talent and liking for music, and it was the wish of his father, who was a minister, that he should cultivate this taste and become an artist; but the great masters of medicine, Johannes Mueller, Meckel v. Hemsbach, R. Wagner, Traube, and Schönlein, who... more...