PREFACE THE following stories cover almost all of the songs of the Kalevala, the epic of the Finnish people. They will lead the English child into a new region in the fairy world, yet one where he will recognise many an old friend in a new form. The very fact that they do open up a new portion of the world of the marvellous, will, it is hoped, render them all the more acceptable, and perhaps, when the... more...

CHAPTER I. Kindred Souls. As there were thirty-three degrees of heat the Boulevard Bourdon was absolutely deserted. Farther down, the Canal St. Martin, confined by two locks, showed in a straight line its water black as ink. In the middle of it was a boat, filled with timber, and on the bank were two rows of casks. Beyond the canal, between the houses which separated the timber-yards, the great pure... more...

CHAPTER IX. FROM NORFOLK TO CAPE HATTERAS. THE ELIZABETH RIVER. — THE CANAL. — NORTH LANDING RIVER. — CURRITUCK SOUND. — ROANOKE ISLAND. — VISIT TO BODY ISLAND LIGHT-HOUSE. — A ROMANCE OF HISTORY. — PAMPLICO SOUND. — THE PAPER CANOE ARRIVES AT CAPE HATTERAS. On Saturday morning, December 5, I left the pier of the Old Dominion Steamship Company, at Norfolk, Virginia, and, rowing across... more...

LAURENCE BINYON A SONG For Mercy, Courage, Kindness, Mirth,There is no measure upon earth.Nay, they wither, root and stem,If an end be set to them. Overbrim and overflow,If your own heart you would know;For the spirit born to blessLives but in its own excess. COMMERCIAL Gross, with protruding ears,Sleek hair, brisk glance, fleshy and yet alert,Red, full, and satisfied,Cased in obtuseness confident not... more...

I. Hadakah, "The Pitiful Last" WHAT boy would not be an Indian for a while when he thinks of the freest life in the world? This life was mine. Every day there was a real hunt. There was real game. Occasionally there was a medicine dance away off in the woods where no one could disturb us, in which the boys impersonated their elders, Brave Bull, Standing Elk, High Hawk, Medicine Bear, and the... more...

INTRODUCTION he Restoration brought back to England something more than a king and the theatre. It renewed in English life the robust vitality of humour which had been repressed under the Commonwealth—though, in spite of repression, there were, even among the Puritan divines, men like the author of Joanereidos, whose self-expression ran the whole gamut from freedom to licentiousness. It is a curious... more...

CHAPTER I I hope and believe there are comparatively few people who will deny that athletics have done much for the health and mind of the modern girl. Exercise in some form or other is essential, and although I am quite ready to admit that games of the strenuous type, such as hockey and lawn tennis, can be and sometimes are overdone, yet the girl of to-day, who enters into and enjoys her game with... more...

CHAPTER I EARLY LIFE 'A great man,' says Hegel, 'condemns the world to the task of explaining him.' Emphatically does the remark apply to Thomas Carlyle. When he began to leave his impress in literature, he was treated as a confusing and inexplicable element. Opinion oscillated between the view of James Mill, that Carlyle was an insane rhapsodist, and that of Jeffrey, that he was... more...

She loved him so, that when he went away to a little war in which his country was interested she could not understand, nor quite forgive. As the correspondent of a newspaper, Chesterton had looked on at other wars; when the yellow races met, when the infidel Turk spanked the Christian Greek; and one he had watched from inside a British square, where he was greatly alarmed lest he should be trampled... more...

AN OLD HOUSE. A few steps from the St. Charles Hotel, in New Orleans, brings you to and across Canal street, the central avenue of the city, and to that corner where the flower-women sit at the inner and outer edges of the arcaded sidewalk, and make the air sweet with their fragrant merchandise. The crowd—and if it is near the time of the carnival it will be great—will follow Canal street. But you... more...