PREFACE. Next to actual travel, the reading of first-class travel stories by men and women of genius is the finest aid to the broadening of views and enlargement of useful knowledge of men and the world’s ways. It is the highest form of intellectual recreation, with the advantage over fiction-reading of satisfying the wholesome desire for facts. With all our modern enthusiasm for long journeys and... more...

I AMONG THE MASSES, OR TRAITS OF CHARACTER. Whatever criticism I choose to make on human character, I hope to soften the criticism with the "milk of human kindness." As rude rough rocks on mountain peaks wear button-hole bouquets so there are intervening traits in the rudest human character, which, if the clouds could only part, would show out in redeeming beauty. To begin with, I believe... more...

I ZOLA LEAVES FRANCE From the latter part of the month of July 1898, down to the end of the ensuing August, a frequent heading to newspaper telegrams and paragraphs was the query, 'Where is Zola?' The wildest suppositions concerning the eminent novelist's whereabouts were indulged in and the most contradictory reports were circulated. It was on July 18 that M. Zola was tried by default... more...

JOHN BURROUGHS John Burroughs was born April 3, 1837, in a little farmhouse among the Catskill Mountains. He was, like most other country boys, acquainted with all the hard work of farm life and enjoyed all the pleasures of the woods and streams. His family was poor, and he was forced at an early date to earn his own living, which he did by teaching school. At the age of twenty-five he chanced to read... more...

CHAPTER I. WHAT LUCK DID FOR THE CHUMS. "It was a long trip, fellows, but we're here at last, thank goodness!" "Yes, away up in the North Woods, at the hunting lodge of Trapper Jim!" "Say, it's hard to believe, and that's a fact. What do you say about it, you old stutterer, Toby Jucklin?" "B-b-bully!" exploded the boy, whose broad shoulders, encased in a... more...

HOPEDALE. I will content myself with a few explanations of the accompanying view of the station from the bay. In winter the aspect of the whole landscape would be very much whiter, and the foreground not water, but ice. The bare, rocky ship hill which forms the background still had considerable patches of snow when we arrived early in August, but it melted from day to day during our stay, for the... more...

Chapter 1: A Rescue. Most of the towns standing on our seacoast have suffered a radical change in the course of the last century. Railways, and the fashion of summer holiday making, have transformed them altogether, and great towns have sprung up where fishing villages once stood. There are a few places, however, which seem to have been passed by, by the crowd. The number yearly becomes smaller, as the... more...

THE SEVENTH DIVISION 'A telegram, sir!' and a mounted orderly who had ridden over from Larkhill, stood outside my tent at the Bustard's Camp, Salisbury Plain, at 5 a.m., on September 17, 1914. In that remote part of the world so removed from the benefits of ordinary life, we were yet in receipt of our daily papers at that early hour in the morning, and I was enjoying a twenty-four... more...

CHAPTER I HENRY THRESK The beginning of all this difficult business was a little speech which Mrs. Thresk fell into a habit of making to her son. She spoke it the first time on the spur of the moment without thought or intention. But she saw that it hurt. So she used it again—to keep Henry in his proper place. "You have no right to talk, Henry," she would say in the hard practical voice which... more...

WITH METHUEN'S COLUMN ON AN AMBULANCE TRAIN. The first view of Capetown from the sea is not easily forgotten. We sailed into the bay just as the sun was rising in splendour behind the cliffs of Table Mountain. The houses of the town which fill the space between the hills and the sea were still more or less in shadow, picked out here and there by twinkling lights. On the summit rested a fleecy... more...