I MANTUA DIVES AVIS Among biographical commonplaces one frequently finds the generalization that it is the provincial who acquires the perspective requisite for a true estimate of a nation, and that it is the country-boy reared in lonely communion with himself who attains the deepest knowledge of human nature. If there be some degree of truth in this reflection, Publius Vergilius Maro, the... more...

THE HOME OF LAFAYETTE. After General Lafayette's visit to the United States, in 1824, every American who went to France went with a firm conviction that he had a right to take as much as he chose of the old gentleman's time and hospitality, at his own estimate of their value. Fortunately, the number of travellers was not great in those days, although a week seldom passed without bringing two... more...

CHAPTER I. Men can do nothing without the make-believe of a beginning. Even science, the strict measurer, is obliged to start with a make-believe unit, and must fix on a point in the stars' unceasing journey when his sidereal clock shall pretend that time is at Nought. His less accurate grandmother Poetry has always been understood to start in the middle; but on reflection it appears that her... more...

CHAPTER I THE TRENCH A young man was shaving. His feet rested upon a broad plank embedded in mud, and the tiny glass in which he saw himself hung upon a wall of raw, reeking earth. A sky, somber and leaden, arched above him, and now and then flakes of snow fell in the sodden trench, but John Scott went on placidly with his task. The face that looked back at him had been changed greatly in the last six... more...

In the vertebrate paleontological collection at the University of Kansas Museum of Natural History there are many fragments of turtles that have been collected, generally in connection with the excavation or recovery of other fossils. The generic identification of this material is possible in many instances, and such identifications give new and important geological and distributional records for... more...

Loch Goil Head AND RESIDENCE OF CAMPBELL, THE POET. The Engraving represents Loch Goil Head, a small village in Argyleshire, as it name imports, at the end of Loch Goil. It is an exquisite vignette, of Alpine sublimity, and is rendered extremely interesting as the residence of Thomas Campbell, Esq. author of the "Pleasures of Hope," &c. and one of the most celebrated of British poets. His... more...

A business meeting of the Lady Hyacinths Shirt-Waist Club was in progress. The roll had been called. The twenty members were all present and the Secretary had read the minutes of the last meeting. These formalities had consumed only a few moments and the club was ready to fall upon its shirt waists. The sewing-machines were oiled and uncovered, the cutting-table was cleared, every Hyacinth had her box... more...

CHAPTER I.THE VALLEY OF HUMILIATION. erle, I may be a little old-fashioned in my notions; middle-aged people never adjust their ideas quite in harmony with you young folk, but in my day we never paused to count fifty at a full stop." Aunt Agatha's voice startled me with its reproachful irritability. Well, I had deserved that little sarcasm for I must confess that I had been reading very... more...

THEIR WORD OF HONOR The president of the Great B. railway system laid down the letter he had just reread three times, and turned about in his chair with an expression of extreme annoyance. "I wish it were possible," he said, slowly, "to find one boy or man in a thousand who would receive instructions and carry them out to the letter without a single variation from the course laid down.... more...

THEORIES OF TUITION Only eight years ago, in 1908, it was declared impossible for one man to teach another to fly. Those few men who had risen from the ground in aeroplanes, notably the Wright brothers, were held to be endowed by nature in some very peculiar way; to be men who possessed some remarkable and hitherto unexplained sense of equilibrium. That these men would be able to take other... more...