THE LETTER. It was a very sunny June day, and a girl was pacing up and down a sheltered path in an old-fashioned garden. She walked slowly along the narrow graveled walk, now and then glancing at the carefully trimmed flowers of an elaborate ribbon border at her right, and stopping for an instant to note the promise of fruit on some well-laden peach and pear-trees. The hot sun was pouring down almost... more...

lice McNearby was washing breakfast dishes and looking out the kitchen window at the November sky when she first spied Dobie. The way he was sneaking up to the house she knew he had killed something. She dried her hands on her apron and tried to put down the suspicion that gnawed at the edge of her mind as she went to the door. During the past month Dobie had killed a cat, a pheasant, two rabbits and a... more...

INTRODUCTION BY THE EDITOR. Recitation with dramatic energy by men whose business it was to travel from one great house to another and delight the people by the way, was usual among us from the first. The scop invented and the glee-man recited heroic legends and other tales to our Anglo-Saxon forefathers. These were followed by the minstrels and other tellers of tales written for the people. They... more...

TALMAGE 1832—1901 A BLOODY MONSTER[1] [Footnote 1: Copyright, 1900, by Louis Klopsch, and reprinted by permission.] It is my son's coat; an evil beast hath devoured him.—Gen. xxxvii., 33. Joseph's brethren dipt their brother's coat in goat's blood, and then brought the dabbled garment to their father, cheating him with the idea that a ferocious animal had slain him, and thus... more...

THE WHITE SLAVES OF THE BOSTON "SWEATERS".   "Hard work is good an' wholesome, past all doubt;  But 'tain't so, ef the mind gits tuckered out." —JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL: Biglow Papers. A wise man of the old time, after a tour of observation, came home to say, "So I returned, and considered all the oppressions that are done under the sun: and behold the tears of... more...

CHAPTER I The dawn was just rising when Gabriel Luna arrived in front of the Cathedral, but in the narrow street of Toledo it was still night. The silvery morning light that had scarcely begun to touch the eaves and roofs, spread out more freely in the little Piazza del Ayuntamiento, bringing out of the shadows the ugly front of the Archbishop's Palace, and the towers of the municipal buildings... more...

HIS APPARITION. The incident was of a dignity which the supernatural has by no means always had, and which has been more than ever lacking in it since the manifestations of professional spiritualism began to vulgarize it. Hewson appreciated this as soon as he realized that he had been confronted with an apparition. He had been very little agitated at the moment, and it was not till later, when the... more...

CHAPTER I I have been urgently asked to put together my reminiscences. I could wish that I had begun to do so at an earlier period of my life, because at this time of writing the lines of the past are somewhat confused in my memory. Yet, with God's help, I shall endeavor to do justice to the individuals whom I have known, and to the events of which I have had some personal knowledge. Let me say at... more...

t has been ten years since my uncle, Philip Westerly, disappeared. Many theories have been advanced as to why and how he vanished so strangely and so completely. Many have wondered why a man should vanish and leave nothing behind him but a smashed mirror. But none of these theories or wild imaginings are half so fantastic as the story I gathered from the diary which some whim prompted him to keep. But... more...

CHAPTER I. THE LIBRARY I had just finished my studies at Oxford, and was taking a brief holiday from work before assuming definitely the management of the estate. My father died when I was yet a child; my mother followed him within a year; and I was nearly as much alone in the world as a man might find himself. I had made little acquaintance with the history of my ancestors. Almost the only thing I... more...