CHILDHOOD My mother was fond of travelling: she would go from Spain to England, from London to Paris, from Paris to Berlin, and from there to Christiania; then she would come back, embrace me, and set out again for Holland, her native country. She used to send my nurse clothing for herself and cakes for me. To one of my aunts she would write: "Look after little Sarah; I shall return in a... more...

CHAPTER I "Turn round, my boy! How ridiculous you look! What sort of a priest's cassock have you got on? Does everybody at the academy dress like that?" With such words did old Bulba greet his two sons, who had been absent for their education at the Royal Seminary of Kief, and had now returned home to their father. His sons had but just dismounted from their horses. They were a couple of... more...

BENEATH THE BANNER. STORIES OF MEN AND WOMEN WHO HAVE BEEN STEADY WHEN "UNDER FIRE". THE STORY OF ALICE AYRES. On the night of Thursday, 25th April, 1886, the cry rang through UnionStreet, Borough, that the shop of Chandler, the oilman, was in flames. So rapid was the progress of the fire that, by the time the escapes reached the house, tongues of flame were shooting out from the windows, and... more...

Part I The tradesmen of Bridgepoint learned to dread the sound of "MissMathilda", for with that name the good Anna always conquered. The strictest of the one price stores found that they could givethings for a little less, when the good Anna had fully said that "MissMathilda" could not pay so much and that she could buy it cheaper "byLindheims." Lindheims was Anna's... more...

§1 The motor-car entered a little white gate, came to a porch under a thick wig of jasmine, and stopped. The chauffeur indicated by a movement of the head that this at last was it. A tall young woman with a big soft mouth, great masses of blue-black hair on either side of a broad, low forehead, and eyes of so dark a brown you might have thought them black, drooped forward and surveyed the house with a... more...

APPARATUS FOR MANUFACTURING GASEOUS OR AERATED BEVERAGES. The apparatus employed at present for making gaseous beverages are divided into two classes—intermittent apparatus based on chemical compression, and continuous ones based on mechanical compression. The first are simple in appearance and occupy small space, but their use is attended with too great inconveniences and losses to allow them to be... more...

CHAPTER I Nora opened her eyes to an unaccustomed consciousness of well-being. She was dimly aware that it had its origin in something deeper than mere physical comfort; but for the moment, in that state between sleeping and wakening, which still held her, it was enough to find that body and mind seemed rested. Youth was reasserting itself. And it was only a short time ago that she had felt that never,... more...

ONE — The Absence of Mr Glass THE consulting-rooms of Dr Orion Hood, the eminent criminologist and specialist in certain moral disorders, lay along the sea-front at Scarborough, in a series of very large and well-lighted french windows, which showed the North Sea like one endless outer wall of blue-green marble. In such a place the sea had something of the monotony of a blue-green dado: for the... more...

INTRODUCTION I was talking the other day to Alfred Coppard, who has steered more successfully than most English story writers away from the Scylla and Charybdis of the modern artist. He told me that he had been reading several new novels and volumes of short stories by contemporary American writers with that awakened interest in the civilization we are framing which is so noticeable among English... more...

CHAPTER I. THE WIDE EXTENT OF SLAVERY. Slavery still exists throughout a large portion of what we are accustomed to regard as the civilized world. In some countries, men are forced to take the chance of a lottery for the determination of the question whether they shall or shall not be transported to distant and unhealthy countries, there most probably to perish, leaving behind them impoverished mothers... more...