PREFACE. Although only the grandson of the first of his name, the author of the following interesting specimen of 16th-century criticism came of a family of great antiquity, of so great an antiquity, indeed, as to preclude our tracing it back to its origin. This family was originally known as the “De Botfelds,” but in the 15th century one branch adopted the more humble name of “Thynne,” or... more...

WELSH RABBIT AND HUNTED HARES Long, long ago, there was a good saint named David, who taught the early Cymric or Welsh people better manners and many good things to eat and ways of enjoying themselves. Now the Welsh folks in speaking of their good teacher pronounced his name Tafid and affectionately Taffy, and this came to be the usual name for a person born in Wales. In our nurseries we all learned... more...

CHAPTER I. Along this particular stretch of line no express had ever passed. All the trains—the few that there were—stopped at all the stations. Denis knew the names of those stations by heart. Bole, Tritton, Spavin Delawarr, Knipswich for Timpany, West Bowlby, and, finally, Camlet-on-the-Water. Camlet was where he always got out, leaving the train to creep indolently onward, goodness only knew... more...

HE WALKED AROUND THE HORSES BY H. BEAM PIPER Illustrated by Cartier This tale is based on an authenticated, documented fact. A man vanished—right out of this world. And where he went— In November 1809, an Englishman named Benjamin Bathurst vanished, inexplicably and utterly. He was en route to Hamburg from Vienna, where he had been serving as his government's envoy to the court of what... more...

BESIDE THE STILL WATERS.   "He leadeth me beside the still waters."Psalm xxiii. 2. There has been a period of geological speculation, at which all the changes which have taken place upon the earth's surface, and have left their unmistakable marks in countless relics of animal and vegetable life, were attributed to the action of sudden and violent forces, of which, to-day, earthquake and... more...

CHAPTER I A. INTRODUCTION The Protestant Reformation marked an era both in life and thought for the modern world. It ushered in a revolution in Europe. It established distinctions and initiated tendencies which are still significant. These distinctions have been significant not for Europe alone. They have had influence also upon those continents which since the Reformation have come under the dominion... more...

CHAPTER I The Encountering of Six within a Wood Only at one point along the straight earth-road leading from Loo-chow to Yu-ping was there any shade, a wood of stunted growth, and here Kai Lung cast himself down in refuge from the noontide sun and slept. When he woke it was with the sound of discreet laughter trickling through his dreams. He sat up and looked around. Across the glade two maidens stood... more...

PHILIP HADDEN AND KING CETYWAYO At the date of our introduction to him, Philip Hadden was a transport-rider and trader in "the Zulu." Still on the right side of forty, in appearance he was singularly handsome; tall, dark, upright, with keen eyes, short-pointed beard, curling hair and clear-cut features. His life had been varied, and there were passages in it which he did not narrate even to his... more...

CHAPTER I The bell of the North Liberty Second Presbyterian Church had just ceased ringing. North Liberty, Connecticut, never on any day a cheerful town, was always bleaker and more cheerless on the seventh, when the Sabbath sun, after vainly trying to coax a smile of reciprocal kindliness from the drawn curtains and half-closed shutters of the austere dwellings and the equally sealed and hard-set... more...

On a foggy morning of early July in the year 1890, the Labrador mail boat, northward bound from St. Johns, felt her way cautiously into the mist-enveloped harbour of Fort Pelican and to her anchorage. For six days the little steamer had been buffeted by wind and ice and fog, and when at last her engines ceased to throb and she lay at rest in harbour, Allen Shadrach Trowbridge of Boston, her only... more...