II. APPRENTICESHIP I On that windy May-morning when Pelle tumbled out of the nest, it so happened that old Klaus Hermann was clattering into town with his manure-cart, in order to fetch a load of dung. And this trifling circumstance decided the boy's position in life. There was no more pother than this about the question: What was Pelle to be? He had never put that question to himself. He had... more...

CHAPTER FIRST. INTRODUCTION. One bright afternoon, or rather evening, in May, two girls, with basket in hand, were seen leaving the little seaport town in which they resided, for the professed purpose of primrose gathering, but in reality to enjoy the pure air of the first summer-like evening of a season, which had been unusually cold and backward. Their way lay through bowery lanes scented with sweet... more...

THE BIG SNOW. "We're going to have snow to-night!" Ted Strong, leader of the broncho boys, was sitting on the back of Sultan, his noble little black stallion, on the ridge of a prairie swell, looking at a lowering sky. Out of the northwest a chilling wind, damp and raw, was sweeping dull-gray clouds before it. Ted had addressed his remark to Bud Morgan, his chum and able lieutenant, who... more...

At 8:10 o'clock on the night of Oct. 14, 1912, a shot was fired the echo of which swept around the entire world in thirty minutes. An insane man attempted to end the life of the only living ex-president of the United States and the best known American. The bullet failed of its mission. Col. Theodore Roosevelt, carrying the leaden missile intended as a pellet of death in his right side, has... more...

CHAPTER I When the widow of Martino Consalvi married young Corbario, people shook their heads and said that she was making a great mistake. Consalvi had been dead a good many years, but as yet no one had thought it was time to say that his widow was no longer young and beautiful, as she had always been. Many rich widows remain young and beautiful as much as a quarter of a century, or even longer, and... more...

CHAPTER I. BIRTH.—EDUCATION.—RESIDENCE IN EUROPE.—AT COLLEGE.—AT THE BAR. —POLITICAL ESSAYS.—MINISTER AT THE HAGUE.—AT BERLIN.—RETURN TO THE UNITED STATES. John Quincy Adams, son of John and Abigail Adams, was born on the 11th of July, 1767, in the North Parish of Braintree, Massachusetts—since incorporated as the town of Quincy. The lives and characters of his parents, intimately... more...

CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION—SOURCES AND SCOPE The conditions of our knowledge of the native religion of early Rome may perhaps be best illustrated by a parallel from Roman archæology. The visitor to the Roman Forum at the present day, if he wishes to reconstruct in imagination the Forum of the early Republic, must not merely 'think away' many strata of later buildings, but, we are told, must... more...

GIVE THE DEVIL HER DUE It was going to be a perfect June day. Already a cloudless, azure sky, promising no hint of rain, arched over a shimmering campus. All shades of green were represented and so was every color in the flowers that lined the walks and burst forth from the beds. In perfect compliment, the lovely old brick and stone buildings sat around the campus, complaisant and secure, full of pride... more...

THE HERO In the year —— there dwelt on Hampstead Heath a small thin gentleman of fifty-eight, gentle disposition, and independent means, whose wits had become somewhat addled from reading the writings and speeches of public men. The castle which, like every Englishman, he inhabited was embedded in lilac bushes and laburnums, and was attached to another castle, embedded, in deference to our national... more...

CHAPTER I INTRODUCTORY—A WORD OF WISDOM, FOUND WRITTEN, LIKE THE MOST ANCIENT, ON LEATHER 'Ah! old men's boots don't go there, sir!' said the bootmaker to me one day, as he pointed to the toes of a pair I had just brought him for mending. It was a significant observation, I thought; and as I went on my way home, writing another such chronicle with every springing step, it filled... more...