LETTER I. TO THE SHOP-KEEPERS, TRADESMEN, FARMERS, AND COMMON-PEOPLE OF IRELAND. NOTE About the year 1720 it was generally acknowledged in Ireland that there was a want there of the small change, necessary in the transaction of petty dealings with shopkeepers and tradesmen. It has been indignantly denied by contemporary writers that this small change meant copper coins. They asserted that there was no... more...

BROADWAY TO BUENOS AIRES The door marked "MRS. MCCHESNEY" was closed. T. A. Buck, president of the Buck Featherloom Petticoat Company, coming gaily down the hall, stopped before it, dismayed, as one who, with a spicy bit of news at his tongue's end, is met with rebuff before the first syllable is voiced. That closed door meant: "Busy. Keep out." "She'll be reading a... more...

THE WAR OF THE ELEMENTS. NO June day ever opened with a fairer promise. Not a single cloud flecked the sky, and the sun coursed onward through the azure sea until past meridian, without throwing to the earth a single shadow. Then, low in the west, appeared something obscure and hazy, blending the hill-tops with the horizon; an hour later, and three or four small fleecy islands were seen, clearly... more...

INTRODUCTION. (11) The subject of Elocution, so far as it is deemed applicable to a work of this kind, will be considered under the following heads, viz: 1. ARTICULATION. 4. READING VERSE. 2. INFLECTION. 5. THE VOICE. 3. ACCENT AND EMPHASIS. 6. GESTURE. I. ARTICULATION. (11) Articulation is the utterance of the elementary sounds of a language, and of their combinations. As words consist of one or more... more...

I. THE LITTLE GRAY HOUSE ON THE BRAE If you had peeped in at the window of a little gray house on a heathery hillside in the Highlands of Scotland one Saturday morning in May some years ago, you might have seen Jean Campbell "redding up" her kitchen. It was a sight best seen from a safe distance, for, though Jean was only twelve years old, she was a fierce little housekeeper every day in the... more...

r. Wagner lived about two miles from a small town, and he thought it would be nice for his boys to have a little goat cart, so they could drive into town for mail and do errands for the family. Without saying anything to his family, he appeared one evening leading a nice, docile looking, long-bearded Billy goat, hitched to a beautiful new red wagon. Of course, the boys were wild with delight, and their... more...

I RUTH AND GODFREY The old street, keeping its New England Sabbath afternoon so decently under its majestic elms, was as goodly an example of its sort as the late seventies of the century just gone could show. It lay along a north-and-south ridge, between a number of aged and unsmiling cottages, fronting on cinder sidewalks, and alternating irregularly with about as many larger homesteads that sat back... more...

A NIGHT IN THE WATER. That was a pleasant life on picquet, in the delicious early summer of the South, and among the endless flowery forests of that blossoming isle. In the retrospect, I seem to see myself adrift upon a horse's back amid a sea of roses. The various outposts were within a five-mile radius, and it was one long, delightful gallop, day and night. I have a faint impression that the... more...

THE ANCIENT PERIOD, FROM THE EARLIEST TIMES TO THE INTRODUCTION OF CHRISTIANITY IN 988. Whether Russia had any literature, or even a distinctive alphabet, previous to the end of the tenth century, is not known. In the year 988, Vladímir, Grand Prince of Kíeff, accepted Christianity for himself and his nation, from Byzantium, and baptized Russia wholesale. Hence his characteristic title in... more...

Introduction—The African Association—Ledyard—Lucas—First information respecting the Niger, or Quorra, and the Gambia—Timbuctoo heard of—Thompson and Jobson’s voyage up the Gambia—Major Haughton’s expedition and death. When the fathers of the present generation were young men, and George the Third ruled the land, they imagined that the whole interior of Africa was one howling... more...