My Dear Sir, This volume is chiefly taken up in answering, to the best of its author's knowledge and ability, the various questions which the old theology of Scotland has been asking for the last few years of the newest of the sciences. Will you pardon me the liberty I take in dedicating it to you? In compliance with the peculiar demand of the time, that what a man knows of science or of art he... more...

A COUNCIL OF THE ELDERS It was an evening of sudden mildness following a dry October gale. The colonel had miscalculated the temperature by one log—only one, he declared, but that had proved a pitchy one, and the chimney bellowed with flame. From end to end the room was alight with it, as if the stored-up energies of a whole pine-tree had been sacrificed in the consumption of that four-foot stick.... more...

RIDE A COCK-HORSE            Ride a Cock-Horseto Banbury Cross,                    To see a fine LadyGet on a white Horse,                  With rings on her fingers,and bells on her toes,She shall have music wherever she goes.                   A FARMER WENT TROTTINGUPON HIS GREY MARE      A Farmer went trotting upon his grey Mare,Bumpety, bumpety, bump!With his... more...

The fog made the clothes of the men of the column in the roadway seem of a luminous quality. It imparted to the heavy infantry overcoats a new colour, a kind of blue which was so pale that a regiment might have been merely a long, low shadow in the mist. However, a muttering, one part grumble, three parts joke, hovered in the air above the thick ranks, and blended in an undertoned roar, which was the... more...

CHAPTER I THE CRASH ON THE HILL "Smooth as glass!" ejaculated Nan Sherwood, as she came in sight of Pendragon Hill and noted the gleaming stretch of snow and ice that ran down to the very edge of Lake Huron. "And you're the girl that said coasting time would never, never come," laughed her chum, Bess Harley, who was walking beside her with her hand on a rope attached to a bobsled... more...

ORIGIN The most careless reader can hardly fail to see that many of the Tales in this volume have the same groundwork as those with which he has been familiar from his earliest youth. They are Nursery Tales, in fact, of the days when there were tales in nurseries—old wives' fables, which have faded away before the light of gas and the power of steam. It is long, indeed, since English nurses told... more...

When we examine the opinions of men, we find that nothing is more uncommon, than common sense; or, in other words, they lack judgment to discover plain truths, or to reject absurdities, and palpable contradictions. We have an example of this in Theology, a system revered in all countries by a great number of men; an object regarded by them as most important, and indispensable to happiness. An... more...

THE COMPLETE FILM ACTOR."ARE YOU A GOOD PUGILIST?"Mr. Percy Garrick Smithers, actor, finding the path to fame less smooth on the legitimate stage than he believed it to be by the Cinema route, went to a producer of film plays and offered his services. "Yes," said the producer, "I might possibly give you lead in a big sensational I am about to put up. Are you a good pugilist?"... more...

I. THE ORIGIN OF THE WAR A deadly feud was raging among the boys of Numedale. The East-Siders hated the West-Siders, and thrashed them when they got a chance; and the West-Siders, when fortune favored them, returned the compliment with interest. It required considerable courage for a boy to venture, unattended by comrades, into the territory of the enemy; and no one took the risk unless dire necessity... more...

1881. Question 1.—Sound is said to travel about four times as fast in water as in air. How has this been proved? State your reasons for thinking whether sound travels faster or slower in oil than in water. <p 184> Answer(a).—Mr. Colladon, a gentleman who happened to have a boat, wrote to a friend called Mr. Sturm to borrow another boat and row out on the other side of the lake, first... more...