BEGINNING THE STUDY Why should not people ride natural history hobbies as well as other kinds of hobbies? Almost all persons become interested in some special study, recreation, or pastime, and their choice is not always as profitable as the selection of a specific branch of nature lore would be. The writer confesses that he would rather pursue a bright, lilting bird or butterfly than a bounding... more...

CHAPTER I THE BOY FROM KANSAS"Holdup!"Coach Robey, coatless, vestless, hatless, his old flannel trousers held up as by a miracle with the aid of a leather strap scarcely deserving the name of belt, pushed his way through the first squad players. The Brimfield Head Coach was a wiry, medium-sized man of about thirty, with a deeply-tanned face from which sharp blue eyes looked out under whitish... more...

CHAPTER I WILD GEESE Slow Dog, Medicine Man, looked out of his lodge. Wild geese were honking overhead. To the Indian it meant the return of spring. "I must be the first to kill one," muttered Slow Dog. Entering his lodge, he presently came out with bow and arrows. Hastening toward a bend in the river which formed a sheltered cove, he hid among a clump of willow bushes and waited in the hope... more...

CHAPTER I. A PARISIENNE'S "AT HOME" Despite a short frock, checked stockings, wide turned-over collar, and a loose sash around the waist of her blouse in other words, despite the childish fashion of a dress which seemed to denote that she was not more than thirteen or fourteen years of age, she seemed much older. An observer would have put her down as the oldest of the young girls who on... more...

THE ARBALEST, OR CROSS-BOW. THE ARBALEST, OR CROSS-BOW. The Bow would appear to have been in most ancient nations the principal implement of war; and to keep alive this "mystery of murder," archery, or the art of shooting with a bow and arrow, seems to have been a favourite pastime in days of peace. In no country, however, has archery been more encouraged than in this island; wherefore the... more...

he narrative of John Dodge is one of the records of frontier life during the period of the American Revolution that displays the intense feeling of hatred and unfairness evinced by the British soldiers to the American rebels. It was written and published during the time of the greatest excitement in the West—the scene of the Narrative—and is historically valuable because of being contemporary with... more...

CHAPTER I Rosalie's earliest apprehension of the world was of a mysterious and extraordinary world that revolved entirely about her father and that entirely and completely belonged to her father. Under her father, all males had proprietory rights in the world and dominion over it; no females owned any part of the world or could do anything with it. All the males in this world—her father, and... more...

SECTION CXLV (continued from previous e-book) And the ruddy geese, and the gallinules and the ducks and the karandavas and the plavas and the parrots and the male kokilas and the herons in confusion flew in all directions, while some proud elephants urged by their mates, as also some lions and elephants in rage, flew at Bhimasena. And as they were distracted at heart through fear, these fierce animals... more...

Salem, June 15, 1835.—A walk down to the Juniper. The shore of the coves strewn with bunches of sea-weed, driven in by recent winds. Eel-grass, rolled and bundled up, and entangled with it,—large marine vegetables, of an olive-color, with round, slender, snake-like stalks, four or five feet long, and nearly two feet broad: these are the herbage of the deep sea. Shoals of fishes, at a little... more...

CHAPTER I. THE RIGHT OF JURIES TO JUDGE OF THE JUSTICE OF LAWS. SECTION I. For more than six hundred years—that is, since Magna Carta, in 1215—there has been no clearer principle of English or American constitutional law, than that, in criminal cases, it is not only the right and duty of juries to judge what are the facts, what is the law, and what was the moral intent of the accused; but that it... more...