A MASTERFUL WOMAN "Don't talk to me, miss," said her ladyship. "I don't want to hear any nonsense from you!" The pretty, frightened girl who shared the drawing-room at this moment with Lady Linden of Cornbridge Manor House had not dared to open her lips. But that was her ladyship's way, and "Don't talk to me!" was a stock expression of hers. Few people were... more...

On the Hunt. On a brilliant summer morning in the last quarter of the seventeenth century a small troop of horsemen crossed the ford of the river Cairn, in Dumfriesshire, not far from the spot where stands the little church of Irongray, and, gaining the road on the western bank of the stream, wended their way towards the moors and uplands which lie in the neighbourhood of Skeoch Hill. The dragoons, for... more...

The Jimmyjohn BossIOne day at Nampa, which is in Idaho, a ruddy old massive jovial man stood by the Silver City stage, patting his beard with his left hand, and with his right the shoulder of a boy who stood beside him. He had come with the boy on the branch train from Boise, because he was a careful German and liked to say everything twice—twice at least when it was a matter of business. This was a... more...

THEREFORE AND BECAUSE.   A distinguished general-officer being appointed to a command in which he would be called on to discharge judicial as well as military duties, expressed to Lord Mansfield his apprehensions, that he would execute his office but ill in the former respect, and that his inexperience and ignorance of technical jurisprudence would prove a serious impediment to his efficient... more...

FIRST JOURNEY ——nec herba, nec latens in asperis Radix fefellit me locis. In the month of April 1812 I left the town of Stabroek to travel through the wilds of Demerara and Essequibo, a part of ci-devant Dutch Guiana, in South America. The chief objects in view were to collect a quantity of the strongest wourali poison and to reach the inland frontier-fort of Portuguese Guiana. It would be a... more...

MAKING CANDY. Grace and Horace Clifford lived in Indiana, and so were called "Hoosiers." Their home, with its charming grounds, was a little way out of town, and from the front windows of the house you could look out on the broad Ohio, a river which would be very beautiful, if its yellow waters were only once settled. As far as the eye could see, the earth was one vast plain, and, in order to... more...

THE SEVENTH DIVISION 'A telegram, sir!' and a mounted orderly who had ridden over from Larkhill, stood outside my tent at the Bustard's Camp, Salisbury Plain, at 5 a.m., on September 17, 1914. In that remote part of the world so removed from the benefits of ordinary life, we were yet in receipt of our daily papers at that early hour in the morning, and I was enjoying a twenty-four... more...

I AT BREAK OF DAY "Stay here beside her, major. I shall not he needed for an hour yet.Meanwhile I'll go downstairs and snatch a bit of sleep, or talk to oldJane." The night was hot and sultry. Though the windows of the chamber were wide open, and the muslin curtains looped back, not a breath of air was stirring. Only the shrill chirp of the cicada and the muffled croaking of the frogs in... more...

Chapter I.—THE CAMPAIGN OPENS. Seldom was there seen such a combination against any man as this against Friedrich, after his Saxon performances in 1756. The extent of his sin, which is now ascertained to have been what we saw, was at that time considered to transcend all computation, and to mark him out for partition, for suppression and enchainment, as the general enemy of mankind. "Partition... more...

Chapter I Introduction Mysticism is a term so irresponsibly applied in English that it has become the first duty of those who use it to explain what they mean by it. The Concise Oxford Dictionary (1911), after defining a mystic as "one who believes in spiritual apprehension of truths beyond the understanding," adds, "whence mysticism (n.) (often contempt)." Whatever may be the precise... more...