A POEM to the memory of our late lamentedQueen Caroline. As a Briton, this tribute I pay to my Queen,Who late fell a martyr to malice and spleen;To add to her sorrows in this fleeting life,Misfortune had made her a young widow’d wife.England saw Brunswick’s daughter surrounded by foes;And, therefore determin’d their arts to oppose.Corruption those minions so much can increase,As to play with our... more...

CHAPTER I MR. CRAIG ARRAYS HIMSELF It was one of the top-floor-rear flats in the Wyandotte, not merely biggest of Washington's apartment hotels, but also "most exclusive"—which is the elegant way of saying most expensive. The Wyandotte had gone up before landlords grasped the obvious truth that in a fire-proof structure locations farthest from noise and dust should and could command... more...

THE NEW CHURCH OF ST. DUNSTAN IN THE WEST. In our fourteenth volume we took a farewell glance of the old church of St. Dunstan, and adverted to the proposed new structure. Little did we then expect that within three years the removal of the old church would be effected, and a fabric of greatly surpassing beauty raised in its place. All this has been accomplished by the unanimity of the parishioners of... more...

CHAPTER I To know George Washington, we must first of all understand the society in which he was born and brought up. As certain lilies draw their colors from the subtle qualities of the soil hidden beneath the water upon which they float, so are men profoundly affected by the obscure and insensible influences which surround their childhood and youth. The art of the chemist may discover perhaps the... more...

INTRODUCTION. Since the beginning of time men have been accustomed to regard the end of a century as a period of decadence. The waning nineteenth century is no more fortunate than its predecessors. We are continually being invited to speculate on the signs around us of decay in politics, in religion, in art, in the whole social fabric. It is not for us to inquire here concerning the truth or the ethics... more...

THE HARMONISTS. My brother Josiah I call a successful man,—very successful, though only an attorney in a manufacturing town. But he fixed his goal, and reached it. He belongs to the ruling class,—men with slow, measuring eyes and bull-dog jaws,—men who know their own capacity to an atom's weight, and who go through life with moderate, inflexible, unrepenting steps. He looks askance at me... more...

P. P. C. ARIADNE Train Number Three, the "Flying Kestrel," vestibuled, had crossed the yellow Rubicon of the West and was mounting toward the Occident up the gentle acclivities of the Great Plain. The morning was perfect, as early autumn mornings are wont to be in the trans-Missouri region; the train was on time; and the through passengers in the Pullman sleeping-car "Ariadne" had... more...

CHAPTER I. WHEREIN AN EXCURSION IS MADE IN A CELTIC MIND A young Irish gentleman of the numerous clan O'Donnells, and a Patrick, hardly a distinction of him until we know him, had bound himself, by purchase of a railway-ticket, to travel direct to the borders of North Wales, on a visit to a notable landowner of those marches, the Squire Adister, whose family-seat was where the hills begin to lift... more...

OUT OF THE WAY To Lisconnel, our very small hamlet in the middle of a wide bogland, the days that break over the dim blue hill-line, faint and far off, seldom bring a stranger's face; but then they seldom take a familiar one away, beyond reach, at any rate of return before nightfall. In fact, there are few places amid this mortal change to which we may come back after any reasonable interval with... more...

Preface At the earliest period concerning which we have any accurate information, about the sixth century A. D., Japanese poetry already contained the germ of its later development. The poems of this early date were composed of a first line of five syllables, followed by a second of seven, followed by a third of five, and so on, always ending with a line of seven syllables followed by another of equal... more...