Old Ragnor's Cliffs. Like some horrific Gorgon's mammoth skull,Thrown up by Titan spade,From out those cavesWhere saurians with mastodons had played,Before the sea had made their homes their graves,And scared their ghosts with screech of sea-born mew and gull, Is Ragnor's beetling brow, the seaman's dread,That scowls by night and dayOn that same seaAnd with earth-shaking sound is... more...

THE CAUSES OF THE REBELLION. No other nation was ever convulsed by an internal struggle so tremendous as that which now rends our own unhappy country. No mere rebellion has ever before spread its calamitous effects so widely, beyond the scene of its immediate horrors. Just in proportion to the magnitude of the evils it has produced, is the enormity of the crime involved, on one side or the other; and... more...

BOOK-WORSHIP.   A book belongs in a peculiar manner to the age and nation that produce it. It is an emanation of the thought of the time; and if it survive to an after-time, it remains as a landmark of the progress of the imagination or the intellect. Some books do even more than this: they press forward to the future age, and make appeals to its maturer genius; but in so doing they still belong to... more...

ne thing about an electronic awakener: no matter how elaborate its hookup, melodious its music, and important its announced reminders, when it goes on in the morning you can always turn it off again. Boswell W. Budge always did exactly that. But there's no turning off one's kids, and thus, on the most important morning of his life, February 30, 2054, Bozzy arose, much against his will,... more...

A POET WITHOUT HONORBefore I die, I'll ride the sky;I'll part the clouds like foam.I'll brand each star with the Rolling R,And lead the Great Bear home.I'll circle Mars to beat the cars,On Venus I will call.If she greets me fair as I ride the air,To meet her I will stall.I'll circle high—as if passing by—Then volplane, bank, and land.Then if she'll smile I'll stop... more...

Chapter I. The Old Homestead. Come gentle reader, let us entwine arms with Memory, and wander back through the avenues of life to childhood's sunny dell, and as we return more leisurely pluck the wild flowers that grow beside the pathway, and entwine them for Memory's garland, and inhale the fragrance of by-gone years. O, there are rich treasures garnered up in Memory's secret chambers,... more...

aval battles of the civil war have an immense importance, because they mark the line of cleavage between naval warfare under the old and naval warfare under the new conditions. From the days of the defeat of the Spanish Armada, for two centuries and a half, the fighting at sea was carried on in ships of substantially the same character—wooden sailing ships, carrying many guns mounted in broadside.... more...

CHAPTER I MY BOYHOOD AND COLLEGE LIFE Washington Irving has somewhere said that it is a happy thing to have been born near some noble mountain or attractive river or lake, which should be a landmark through all the journey of life, and to which we could tether our memory. I have always been thankful that the place of my nativity was the beautiful village of Aurora, on the shores of the Cayuga Lake in... more...

The Talking Thrush  CERTAIN man had a garden, and in his garden he sowed cotton seeds. By-and-by the cotton seeds grew up into a cotton bush, with big brown pods upon it. These pods burst open when they are ripe; and you can see the fluffy white cotton bulging all white out of the pods. There was a Thrush in this garden, and the Thrush thought within herself how nice and soft the cotton looked. She... more...

"What would you think," I asked Marjorie over supper, "if I should undertake to lead a junior achievement group this summer?" She pondered it while she went to the kitchen to bring in the dessert. It was dried apricot pie, and very tasty, I might add. "Why, Donald," she said, "it could be quite interesting, if I understand what a junior achievement group is. What gave you... more...