"Nothing around those other suns but ashes and dried blood," old Dunbar told the space-wrecked, desperate men. "Only one way to go, where we can float down through the clouds to Paradise. That's straight ahead to the sun with the red rim around it." But Dunbar's eyes were old and uncertain. How could they believe in his choice when every star in this forsaken section of space... more...

Us Poets Wordsworth wrote some tawdry stuff;  Much of Moore I have forgotten;Parts of Tennyson are guff;  Bits of Byron, too, are rotten. All of Browning isn't great;  There are slipshod lines in Shelley;Every one knows Homer's fate;  Some of Keats is vermicelli. Sometimes Shakespeare hit the slide,  Not to mention Pope or Milton;Some of Southey's stuff is snide.  Some of... more...

CHAPTER I She stood before the minister who was to marry them, very tall and straight. With lips slightly parted she looked at him steadfastly, not at the man beside her who was about to become her husband. Her father, with a last gentle pressure of her arm, had taken his place behind her. In the hush that had fallen throughout the little chapel, all the restless movement of the people who had gathered... more...

INTRODUCTION Victor Hugo was thinking much of Æschylus and his Prometheus at the time he conceived the figure of Gilliatt, heroic warrer with the elements. But it is to a creature of the Gothic mind like Byron's Manfred, and not to any earlier, or classic, type of the eternal rebellion against fate or time or circumstance, that Hugo's readers will be tempted to turn for the fellow to his... more...

CHAPTER I. "It is not a question of what we should like to do, Randy; it is a question of what we must do." "I know it, Earl. One thing is certain: the way matters stand we can't pay the quarter's rent for this timber land to-morrow unless we borrow the money, and where we are going for it I haven't the least idea." "Nor I. It's a pity the Jackson Lumber Company... more...

I. A Blood-red sun rested its huge disk upon a low mud wall that crested a rise to westward, and flattened at the bottom from its own weight apparently. A dozen dried-out false-acacia-trees shivered as the faintest puff in all the world of stifling wind moved through them; and a hundred thousand tiny squirrels kept up their aimless scampering in search of food that was not there. A coppersmith was... more...

"Nice that you dropped in," the man in the detention room said. "I never expected a visit from the Consul General. It makes me feel important." "The Confederation takes an interest in all of its citizens' welfare," Lanceford said. "You are important! Incidentally, how is it going?" "Not too bad. They treat me all right. But these natives sure are tough on... more...

I.On the cold and dark Atlantic,The night was growing lateSteamed the maiden ship TitanicCrowded with human freightShe was valued at Ten Million,The grandest ever roamed the seas,Fitted complete to swim the oceanWhen the rolling billows freeze.She bade farewell to EnglandAll dressed in robes of whiteGoing out to plow the briny deep,And was on her western flight;She was now so swiftly glidingIn L Fifty... more...

CHAPTER I PRINCE SANSEVERO DIMINISHES THE FORTUNES OF HIS HOUSE Her excellency the Princess Sansevero sat up in bed. Reaching quickly across the great width of mattress, she pulled the bell-rope twice, then, shivering, slid back under the warmth of the covers. She drew them close up over her shoulders, so far that only a heavy mass of golden hair remained visible above the old crimson brocade of which... more...

DOORYARDS Tiverton has breezy, upland roads, and damp, sweet valleys; but should you tarry there a summer long, you might find it wasteful to take many excursions abroad. For, having once received the freedom of family living, you will own yourself disinclined to get beyond dooryards, those outer courts of domesticity. Homely joys spill over into them, and, when children are afoot, surge and riot... more...