CHAPTER I LLOYD MEETS HERO It was in Switzerland in the old town of Geneva. The windows of the big hotel dining-room looked out on the lake, and the Little Colonel, sitting at breakfast the morning after their arrival, could scarcely eat for watching the scene outside. Gay little pleasure boats flashed back and forth on the sparkling water. The quay and bridge were thronged with people. From open... more...

INTRODUCTION Jonathan Edwards was born October 5, 1703, in what is now South Windsor, Conn., a part of the parish then known as “Windsor Farmes.” His father, the Rev. Timothy Edwards, the minister of the parish, a Harvard graduate, was reputed a man of superior ability and polished manners, a lover of learning as well as of religion; in addition to his pastoral duties, he fitted young men for... more...

COLLEGES IN AMERICA. I. THE RISE OF UNIVERSITIES IN THE OLD WORLD. The American college system is deeply rooted in the past. It will be better understood if we trace briefly its historic connection with the ancient and European seats of learning. Higher education has been promoted among all great nations. Flourishing colleges were founded among ancient people. In the kingdoms of Judah and Israel,... more...

THE SHIP FROM TERRA I went through the gateway, towing my equipment in a contragravity hamper over my head. As usual, I was wondering what it would take, short of a revolution, to get the city of Port Sandor as clean and tidy and well lighted as the spaceport area. I knew Dad's editorials and my sarcastic news stories wouldn't do it. We'd been trying long enough. The two girls in bikinis... more...

1. MISS BLAKE—FROM MEMORY If ever a residence, "suitable in every respect for a family of position," haunted a lawyer's offices, the "Uninhabited House," about which I have a story to tell, haunted those of Messrs. Craven and Son, No. 200, Buckingham Street, Strand. It did not matter in the least whether it happened to be let or unlet: in either case, it never allowed Mr. Craven... more...

NO SINECURE I am still uncertain which surprised me more, the telegram calling my attention to the advertisement, or the advertisement itself. The telegram is before me as I write. It would appear to have been handed in at Vere Street at eight o'clock in the morning of May 11, 1897, and received before half-past at Holloway B.O. And in that drab region it duly found me, unwashen but at work before... more...

CHAPTER I French women of the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries, when studied according to the distinctive phases of their influence, are best divided into three classes: those queens who, as wives, represented virtue, education, and family life; the mistresses, who were instigators of political intrigue, immorality, and vice; and the authoresses and other educated women, who constituted... more...

THOMAS CHATTERTON. In the history of English literature there is no name that inspires a profounder melancholy than that of the "marvellous boy" Chatterton, of whom it must be said that in genius he surpassed any one who ever died so young, and that in suffering he had larger experience than almost any one who has lived to old age. Shelley says of him:"'Mid others of less note came one... more...

CHAPTER I In Which Silken Ladies Ascend One Stairway, and a Lonely Wayfarer Ascends Another and Comes Face to Face With Old Friends. The big house, standing on a high hill which overlooked the city, showed in the moonlight the grotesque outlines of a composite architecture. Originally it had been a square substantial edifice of Colonial simplicity. A later and less restrained taste had aimed at a... more...

THE GREAT ADVENTURER When it was known that Mr. H. G. Wells had set forth to discover God, all amateurs of intellectual adventure were filled with pleasurable excitement and anticipation. For is not Mr. Wells the great Adventurer of latter-day literature? No quest is too perilous for him, no forlorn-hope too daring. He led the first explorers to the moon. He it was who lured the Martians to earth and... more...