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...

CHAPTER I. THE SQUARE DEAL WINS. Salesmanship is the business of the world; it is about all there is to the world of business. Enter the door of a successful wholesale or manufacturing house and you stand upon the threshold of an establishment represented by first-class salesmen. They are the steam —and a big part of the engine, too—that makes business move. I saw in print, the other day, the... more...

FOREWORD The "infant phenomenon" in literature is rarer than in more physical branches of art, but its productions are not likely to be of value outside the doting domestic circle. Even Pope who "lisped in numbers for the numbers came," did not add to our Anthology from his cradle, though he may therein have acquired his monotonous rocking-metre. Immaturity of mind and experience, so... more...