"Oh dear! what shall I do?" cried George, fretfully, one rainy afternoon. "Mamma, do tell me what to do." "And I'm so tired!" echoed Helen, who was lazily playing with a kitten in her lap. "I don't see why it should rain on a Friday afternoon, when we have no lessons to learn. We can't go out, and no one can come to see us. It's too bad, there!"... more...

THE THREE LITTLE GNOMES A silvery thread of smoke curled up over the trunk of the old tree and floated away through the forest, and tiny voices came from beneath the trunk of the old tree. Long, long ago, the tree had stood strong and upright and its top branches reached far above any of the other trees in the forest, but the tree had grown so old it began to shiver when the storms howled through the... more...

INTRODUCTION The attack on the fortified village of Gommecourt, which Mr. Liveing describes in these pages with such power and colour, was a part of the first great allied attack on July 1, 1916, which began the battle of the Somme. That battle, so far as it concerns our own troops, may be divided into two sectors: one, to the south of the Ancre River, a sector of advance, the other, to the north of... more...

A SANDWICH AT RINI’S “You know, Lou, I’ve been doing a lot of wondering here of late,” remarked Penny Parker to her chum, Louise Sidell. The girls were riding in Penny’s mud-splattered blue coupe, otherwise known as the Leaping Lena. At the moment Lena was bouncing more than usual for the pavement was bumpy in this section of Riverview. “Wondering what?” inquired Louise, absently brushing... more...

CHAPTER I A MAIDEN’S “HUMPH” A Farm-hand nodded in answer to a question asked him by Napoleon on the morning of Waterloo. The nod was false, or the emperor misunderstood—and Waterloo was lost. On the nod of a farm-hand rested the fate of Europe. This story may not be so important as the battle of Waterloo—and it may be. I think that Napoleon was sure to lose to Wellington sooner or later, and... more...

CHAPTER I I COME HOME: AND THE WOLVES HOWLI am sick of the bitter wood-smoke,And sick of the wind and rain:I will leave the bush behind me,And look for my love again. Little as I guessed it, this story really began at Skunk's Misery. But Skunk's Misery was the last thing in my head, though I had just come from the place. Hungry, dog-tired, cross with the crossness of a man in authority whose... more...

I THE GIRL AND THE BOY The Beautiful River grows very wide in making its great bend around western Kentucky. On the other side, its shores are low for many miles, but well guarded by giant cottonwoods. These spectral trees stand close to its brink and stretch their phantom arms far over its broad waters, as if perpetually warding off the vast floods that rush down from the North. But the floods are to... more...

The Winner Max Mechenmal was an independent manager of a newspaper kiosk. He ate and drank well; he had relations with many women, but he was careful. Because his salary was insufficient, he occasionally permitted himself to take money from Ilka Leipke. Ilka Leipke was an unusually small, but well-developed, elegant whore, who attracted many men and women with her bizarre nature and apparently silly... more...

LETTER I. CHILDHOOD. I have given my best consideration to the arguments by which you support the demand for a few notices of events connected with my personal recollections of the past. That which has chiefly influenced me is the consideration, urged on what I know to be just and reasonable grounds, that when it has pleased God to bring any one before the public in the capacity of an author, that... more...

PREFACE The stories in this Fairy Book come from all quarters of the world. For example, the adventures of ‘Ball-Carrier and the Bad One’ are told by Red Indian grandmothers to Red Indian children who never go to school, nor see pen and ink. ‘The Bunyip’ is known to even more uneducated little ones, running about with no clothes at all in the bush, in Australia. You may see photographs of these... more...