hen I came into the control room the Captain looked up from a set of charts at me. He stood up and gave me a salute and I returned it, not making a ceremony out of it. "Half an hour to landing, sir," he said. That irritated me. It always irritates me. "I'm not an officer," I said. "I'm not even an enlisted man." He nodded, too quickly. "Yes, Mr. Carboy," he... more...

By July 1, 1916, the war had involved every civilized nation upon the globe except the United States of North and of South America, which had up to that time succeeded in maintaining their neutrality. Belgium, Holland, Denmark, Switzerland, Poland, Austria Hungary, Lombardy, and Servia, had been devastated. Five million adult male human beings had been exterminated by the machines of war, by disease,... more...

A CYNIC'S CHALLENGE Four men sat in the smoking-room of a London club. They were alone. That is scarcely to be wondered at, for it was far past midnight. Moreover, it was not a large club, and even when the place was most frequented large numbers were seldom present. Three of the men were chatting cursorily about a defeat of the Government which had taken place that night, but the fourth, by far... more...

Jean de Marselait, Inquisitor Extraordinary of the King of France, raised his head from the parchments that littered the crude desk at which he sat. His glance shifted along the long stone-walled, torchlit room to the file of mail-clad soldiers who stood like steel statues by its door. A word from him and two of them sprang forward. "You may bring in the prisoner," he said. The two disappeared... more...

hat do I do for a living?" repeated the slim dark-skinned young man in the next seat of the Earth-Moon liner. "I'm a witch doctor," he answered with complete sincerity. "What do you do? I mean, what do they hire you for?" asked Donahue with understandable confusion and a touch of nervousness. "I'm registered as a psychotherapist," said the dark-skinned young man.... more...

On a recent journey to the Pennsylvania oil regions, I stopped one evening with a fellow-traveler at a village which had just been thrown into a turmoil of excitement by the exploits of a horse-thief. As we sat around the tavern hearth, after supper, we heard the particulars of the rogue's capture and escape fully discussed; then followed many another tale of theft and robbery, told amid curling... more...

INTRODUCTORY NOTE. OUT of the darkest depths of life, where vice and crime and misery abound, comes the Byron of the twentieth century, the poet of the vagabond and the proletariat, Maxim Gorky. Not like the beggar, humbly imploring for a crust in the name of the Lord, nor like the jeweller displaying his precious stones to dazzle and tempt the eye, he comes to the world,—nay, in accents of Tyrtaeus... more...

CHAPTER I. THE TWO POETS OF SAFFRON PARK THE suburb of Saffron Park lay on the sunset side of London, as red and ragged as a cloud of sunset. It was built of a bright brick throughout; its sky-line was fantastic, and even its ground plan was wild. It had been the outburst of a speculative builder, faintly tinged with art, who called its architecture sometimes Elizabethan and sometimes Queen Anne,... more...

The Four Corners in Middleton made a pleasant drive from the university town of Camberton. Many a time in the history of the house a party of young fellows had driven over the old turnpike that started where the arsenal used to stand in the sacred quarter of Camberton, and as the evening sun gilded the low, fresh-water marshes beyond Spring Pond, would trot on toward the rolling hills of Middleton.... more...

The Law, as quoted, lays down a fair conduct of life, and one not easy to follow. I have been fellow to a beggar again and again under circumstances which prevented either of us finding out whether the other was worthy. I have still to be brother to a Prince, though I once came near to kinship with what might have been a veritable King and was promised the reversion of a Kingdom — army, law-courts,... more...