AN OUTCAST. CHAPTER I. CHARLESTON. This simple story commences on a November evening, in the autumn of 185-. Charleston and New York furnish me with the scenes and characters. Our quaint old city has been in a disquiet mood for several weeks. Yellow fever has scourged us through the autumn, and we have again taken to scourging ourselves with secession fancies. The city has not looked up for a month.... more...

Directly below the old fort of San Cristobal, in San Juan, Porto Rico, projecting out over the sea from a corner of the sea wall, is a sentry box. Years ago a sentry, placed on duty at this lonely post, utterly disappeared, leaving behind only his musket and side-arms. His disappearance was so mysterious that it was attributed to sea-devils, and the sentry box has ever since been given a wide berth by... more...

oc Stone made sure I wouldn't give him the "too busy" routine. He sent Millie to get me. "Okay, Millie," I said to Stone's secretary. "I'll be right with you." I cleared the restricted notes and plans from my desk and locked them in the file cabinet, per regulations, and walked beside Millie to Stone's office. "It's a reflex mechanism, Mike," Dr.... more...

Chapter I IN THE LISTENING TIME HAS there ever been a time when no stories were told? Has there ever been a people who did not care to listen? I think not. When we were little, before we could read for ourselves, did we not gather eagerly round father or mother, friend or nurse, at the promise of a story? When we grew older, what happy hours did we not spend with our books. How the printed words made... more...

THE SON OF THE BRAHMAN In the shade of the house, in the sunshine of the riverbank near the boats, in the shade of the Sal-wood forest, in the shade of the fig tree is where Siddhartha grew up, the handsome son of the Brahman, the young falcon, together with his friend Govinda, son of a Brahman. The sun tanned his light shoulders by the banks of the river when bathing, performing the sacred ablutions,... more...

CHAPTER I The soft, muffling dusk settled slowly downward from the darkening blue sky and little by little smothered the weird gleam that rose from the gray-white plain. Away toward the east a range of mountains gloomed faintly, rimming the distance. Another towered against the western horizon. Cactus clumps and bunches of mesquite and greasewood blotted the whitely gleaming earth. In and out among... more...

OUR SHAKSPEARIAN CORRESPONDENCE. We have received from a valued and kind correspondent (not one of those emphatically good-natured friends so wittily described by Sheridan) the following temperate remonstrance against the tone which has distinguished several of our recent articles on Shakspeare:— Shakspeare Suggestions (Vol. viii., pp. 124. 169.).— "Most busy, when least I do." I am... more...

I. Little Agnes.    "And she, not seven years old,   A slighted child."—WORDSWORTH. "What is it Lewie wants? Does he want sister's pretty book?" "No!" roared the cross baby boy, pointing with his finger to the side-board. "Well, see here, Lewie! here is a pretty ball; shall we roll it? There! now roll it back to sister." "No-o-o!" still screamed... more...

ANOTHER RURAL CONFERENCE. [A Church Dignitary, writing to The Globe, suggests that the rural reform most urgently needed is a better postal system in the shires.] Radical Reformer (meeting Rural Labourer tramping to London). Yours is a typical case, my man. You are a victim of our insensate Land Laws, or exploded Feudalism. No doubt you are leaving the country because you could not find employment... more...

CHAPTER I Of course there was a Great House at Allington. How otherwise should there have been a Small House? Our story will, as its name imports, have its closest relations with those who lived in the less dignified domicile of the two; but it will have close relations also with the more dignified, and it may be well that I should, in the first instance, say a few words as to the Great House and its... more...