Preface The purpose of this book, as conceived by the author, is not to attempt to create or to influence usage by pointing out which words should or should not be used, nor to explain the meaning of terms, but simply to provide in a form convenient for reference and study the words that can be used, leaving it to those who consult its pages to determine for themselves, with the aid of a dictionary if... more...

SPEECH AT CLINTON, ILLINOIS, SEPTEMBER 8, 1858. The questions are sometimes asked "What is all this fuss that is being made about negroes? What does it amount to? And where will it end?" These questions imply that those who ask them consider the slavery question a very insignificant matter they think that it amounts to little or nothing and that those who agitate it are extremely foolish. Now... more...

CHAPTER I A SON OF THE WEST Out of the brooding darkness was born the first timid blush of the morn. It sprang to life along the serried edge of the Medicine Bow, a broadening band of blood-red light. For one instant it seemed that some titan breath had blown at the source, darkening the red to purple; and then, with startling suddenness, the whole wide range flamed up. The full red rim of the sun... more...

LETTER ICalais, June 20th, 1775Dear Sir, As you are kind enough to say, that those letters which I wrote from this kingdom, nine or ten years ago, were of some use to you, in the little tour you made through France soon after, and as they have been considered in some degree to be so to many other persons, (since their publication) who were unacquainted with the manners and customs of the French nation,... more...

With so much at stake, Charles Dennison should not have been careless. An inventor cannot afford carelessness, particularly when his invention is extremely valuable and obviously patentable. There are too many grasping hands ready to seize what belongs to someone else, too many men who feast upon the creativity of the innocent. A touch of paranoia would have served Dennison well; but he was lacking in... more...

CHAPTER I. THE BOY IN BLUE. When expulsion from college, in his junior years, was visited upon Jack Sprague, he straightway became the hero of Acredale. And, though the grave faculty had felt constrained to vindicate college authority, it was well known that they sympathized with the infraction of decorum that obliged them to put this mark of disgrace upon one of the most promising of their students.... more...

IMPROVED DYNAMO MACHINE. The continuous current and the alternating current generators invented by Dr. J. Hopkinson and Dr. Alexander Muirhead are peculiarly interesting as being probably the first in which the bobbins of the armature were wound with copper ribbon and arranged on a disk armature much in the same way as was afterward done by Sir William Thomson and by Mr. Ferranti. In the... more...

In choosing a few typical cases which illustrate the remarkable mental qualities of my friend, Sherlock Holmes, I have endeavoured, as far as possible, to select those which presented the minimum of sensationalism, while offering a fair field for his talents. It is, however, unfortunately impossible entirely to separate the sensational from the criminal, and a chronicler is left in the dilemma that he... more...

he night whispered the message. Over the many miles of loneliness it was borne, carried on the wind, rustled by the half-sentient lichens and the dwarfed trees, murmured from one to another of the little creatures that huddled under crags, in caves, by shadowy dunes. In no words, but in a dim pulsing of dread which echoed through Kreega's brain, the warning ran— They are hunting again. Kreega... more...

CHAPTER I INTRODUCES ONE YOUNG MAN The boys in the office were, I fancy, a bit prejudiced against him before he arrived. It wasn't his fault, for he was a stranger to them all, but it got about that the dear old "chief" had decided to engage a real good Sunday-school boy. Someone had heard him say, or, more likely, thought it would be funny to imagine him saying, that the advent of such a... more...