INTRODUCTION. No period in the history of our country surpasses in interest that immediately preceding and including the beginning of the Revolutionary War. Many volumes have been written setting forth the patriotism and heroism of the fathers of the Republic, but the devotion of the mothers and daughters has received far less attention. This volume is designed, therefore, to portray in some degree... more...

IT SEEMED they had argued for years as they were arguing tonight. The man paced back and forth chain-smoking cigarettes; the woman sat motionless, watching him. They glanced at their watches with fearful eyes. They heard, with acutely alert ears, the goings and comings of people in the hall; heard the shattering blast of rockets in the sky above the city. And they argued."So you're going... more...

INTRODUCTION The correspondence of George Sand and Gustave Flaubert, if approached merely as a chapter in the biographies of these heroes of nineteenth century letters, is sufficiently rewarding. In a relationship extending over twelve years, including the trying period of the Franco-Prussian War and the Commune, these extraordinary personalities disclose the aspects of their diverse natures which are... more...

I INTRODUCING—THE SETTLEMENT HOUSE There is a certain section of New York that is bounded upon the north by Fourteenth Street, upon the south by Delancy. Folk who dwell in it seldom stray farther west than the Bowery, rarely cross the river that flows sluggishly on its eastern border. They live their lives out, with something that might be termed a feverish stolidity, in the dim crowded flats, and... more...

A Fourteenth Century Legend Friar Bacon, reading one day of the many conquests of England, bethought himself how he might keep it hereafter from the like conquests and so make himself famous to all posterity. This (after great study) he found could be no way so well done as one; which was to make a head of brass, and if he could make this head to speak (and hear it when it spoke) then might he be able... more...

The starship waited. Cylindrical walls enclosed it, and a transparent plastic dome held it back from the sky and the stars. It waited, while night changed to day and back again, while the seasons merged one into another, and the years, and the centuries. It towered as gleaming and as uncorroded as it had when it was first built, long ago, when men had bustled about it and in it, their shouting and... more...

To make it clear how normal everything was when the evening started out, I'll let you in at the time Willy phoned me. I was in my apartment with a lady from down the hall.... I had asked her what she liked and she'd purred, "You." I had asked her with soda or gingerale and she'd said, "Straight," so I'd obliged and poured myself a triple too and sank into the sofa... more...

CHAPTER I I had placed the lumber inside the yard as directed, and was already rehitching the traces, when the man crossed the street slowly, switching his light cane carelessly in the air. I had noticed him before standing there in the doorway of the drug store, my attention attracted by the fashionable cut of his clothes, and the manner in which he watched me work. Now, as he rounded the heads of the... more...

CHAPTER I. THE CONFIDENCES. IN an upper room of one of the palatial houses which are situated on the north side of Hyde Park, two ladies sat at breakfast, and gossiped over their tea. The elder of the two was Lady Loring—still in the prime of life; possessed of the golden hair and the clear blue eyes, the delicately-florid complexion, and the freely developed figure, which are among the favorite... more...

CHAPTER I WANT OF VARIETY A BLEMISH There is a sad want of variety amongst evergreen and deciduous shrubs in the average English garden. Faith is placed in a few shrubs with a reputation for robbing the soil of its goodness and making a monotonous ugly green bank, neither pleasant to look at nor of any protective value. As one who knows shrubs well and the way to group them says, "Even the... more...