OLD PORTRAITS AND MODERN SKETCHES Inscribed as follows, when first collected in book-form:—To Dr. G. BAILEY, of the National Era, Washington, D. C., thesesketches, many of which originally appeared in the columns of thepaper under his editorial supervision, are, in their present form,offered as a token of the esteem and confidence which years ofpolitical and literary communion have justified and... more...

This, then, was the Creche, Anno Domini 2500. A great, mile-square blind cube topping a ragged mountain; bare escarpments falling away to a turbulent sea. For five centuries the Creche had stood so, and the Androids had come forth in an unending stream to labor for Man, the Master.... —Quintus Bland, The Romance of Genus Homo. irector Han Merrick paced the floor nervously. His thin, almost ascetic... more...

Gottfried Keller may fitly be called the greatest narrative writer that Switzerland has ever produced. Born July 19, 1819, near Zurich, he was reared in direst poverty. By dint of the hardest labor and by practicing the utmost frugality, his father was barely able to provide bread for wife and children. But in the midst of this penury the genius of his young son Gottfried expanded. As a mere child he... more...

THE FIRST OF THE MIKADOS. The year 1 in Japan is the same date as 660 B.C. of the Christian era, so that Japan is now in its twenty-sixth century. Then everything began. Before that date all is mystery and mythology. After that date there is something resembling history, though in the early times it is an odd mixture of history and fable. As for the gods of ancient Japan, they were many in number, and... more...

BY WAY OF PROLOGUE "Years of Plenty" was the name an Englishman recently gave to a book of his school days. My own years of secondary school and college were different from his, by far, but no less full. I shall only say by way of preface that they numbered seven. There were two of them at high school, one at a military school on the Hudson, and four at our city's university. Seven in all.... more...

I. It was many years ago.  Hadleyburg was the most honest and upright town in all the region round about.  It had kept that reputation unsmirched during three generations, and was prouder of it than of any other of its possessions.  It was so proud of it, and so anxious to insure its perpetuation, that it began to teach the principles of honest dealing to its babies in the cradle, and made the like... more...

[3] THE making of an anthology of English prose is what must have occurred to many of its students, by way of pleasure to themselves, or of profit to other persons. Such an anthology, the compass and variety of our prose literature being considered, might well follow exclusively some special line of interest in it; exhibiting, for instance, what is so obviously striking, its imaginative power, or its... more...

PROLOGUE. A Castle in Normandy. Interior of the Hall. Roofs of a City seen thro' Windows. HENRY and BECKET at chess. HENRY.So then our good Archbishop TheobaldLies dying. BECKET.I am grieved to know as much. HENRY.But we must have a mightier man than heFor his successor. BECKET.                   Have you thought of one? HENRY.A cleric lately poison'd his own mother,And... more...

MAY-DAY. Art thou beautiful, as of old, O wild, moorland, sylvan, and pastoral Parish! the Paradise in which our spirit dwelt beneath the glorious dawning of life—can it be, beloved world of boyhood, that thou art indeed beautiful as of old? Though round and round thy boundaries in half an hour could fly the flapping dove—though the martens, wheeling to and fro that ivied and wall-flowered ruin of... more...

PREFACE These scattered leaves from the unwritten school-book of the wilderness have been gathered together for the children of to-day; both as a slight contribution to the treasures of aboriginal folk-lore, and with the special purpose of adapting them to the demands of the American school and fireside. That is to say, we have chosen from a mass of material the shorter and simpler stories and parts of... more...