THE TORRENTS OF SPRING   'Years of gladness,    Days of joy,  Like the torrents of spring    They hurried away.' —From an Old Ballad. … At two o'clock in the night he had gone back to his study. He had dismissed the servant after the candles were lighted, and throwing himself into a low chair by the hearth, he hid his face in both hands. Never had he felt such weariness... more...

  nearly stumbled over the kid in the dark before I saw him. His wheelchair was parked as usual on the tired strip of carpet grass that separated his mother's trailer from the one Doc Shull and I lived in, but it wasn't exactly where I'd learned to expect it when I rolled in at night from the fishing boats. Usually it was nearer the west end of the strip where Joey could look across the... more...

No. I'SANTA CLAUS' Nobody knew where Teddy Pegram came from or why the man ordained to settle down in Little Silver. He had no relations round about and couldn't, or wouldn't, tell his new neighbours what had brought him along. But he bided a bit with Mrs. Ford, the policeman's wife, as a lodger, and then, when he'd sized up the place and found it suited him, he took a... more...

CHAPTER I. PRELIMINARY: TRIESTE TO LISBON. The glory of an explorer, I need hardly say, results not so much from the extent, or the marvels of his explorations, as from the consequences to which they lead. Judged by this test, my little list of discoveries has not been unfavoured of fortune. Where two purblind fever-stricken men plodded painfully through fetid swamp and fiery thorn-bush over the... more...

CHAPTER I. IN WHICH THE NORTH POLAR PRACTICAL ASSOCIATION RUSHES A DOCUMENT ACROSS TWO WORLDS “Then Mr Maston, you pretend that a woman has never been able to make mathematical or experimental-science progress?” “To my extreme regret, I am obliged to, Mrs. Scorbitt,” answered J.T. Maston. “That there have been some very remarkable women in mathematics, especially in Russia, I fully and... more...

CHAPTER I. THE COTTAGE BESIDE "THE CAUSEWAY" In a little cleft, not deep enough to be a gorge, between two grassy hills, traversed by a clear stream, too small to be called a river, too wide to be a rivulet, stood, and, I believe, still stands, a little cottage, whose one bay-window elevates it above the condition of a laboring-man's, and shows in its spacious large-paned proportions... more...

Scene: Dr. Peacock's house. Flem Truly, Dr. Peacock, you're a clever man. I've been a pharmacist for twenty-five years and never met a doctor who practiced medicine like you. Peacock Indeed, no other doctor of my acquaintance has penetrated nature as deeply as I have. But I don't like to praise myself; I can't stand flattery. I want you to come home with me to discuss an... more...

CHAPTER I ADVICE "You ought to get married, Miss Sylvia," said old Jeffcott, the head gardener, with a wag of his hoary beard. "You'll need to be your own mistress now." "I should hope I am that anyway," said, Sylvia with a little laugh. She stood in the great vinery—a vivid picture against a background of clustering purple fruit. The sunset glinted on her tawny hair. Her... more...

CHAPTER FIRST AT HOME IN THE LITTLE STONE HUT High up in the Bernese Oberland, quite a distance above the meadow-encircled hamlet of Kandergrund, stands a little lonely hut, under the shadow of an old fir-tree. Not far away rushes down from the wooded heights of rock the Wild brook, which in times of heavy rains, has carried away so many rocks and bowlders that when the storms are ended a ragged mass... more...

CHAPTER I.INTRODUCING MR. HOPKINS TOPPLETON.Mr. Hopkins Toppleton, Barrister of London and New York, was considered by his intimates a most fortunate young man. He was accounted the happy possessor of an income of something over fifty thousand dollars a year, derived from investments which time had shown to be as far removed from instability, and as little influenced by the fluctuations of the stock... more...