This is the book which fixed the name and character of John Bull on the English people. Though in one part of the story he is thin and long nosed, as a result of trouble, generally he is suggested to us as "ruddy and plump, with a pair of cheeks like a trumpeter," an honest tradesman, simple and straightforward, easily cheated; but when he takes his affairs into his own hands, acting with good... more...

CHAPTER I One lovely spring morning—and this story begins on a spring morning some fifty years or more ago—a joy of a morning that made one glad to be alive, when the radiant sunshine had turned the ribbon of a road that ran from Warehold village to Barnegat Light and the sea to satin, the wide marshes to velvet, and the belts of stunted pines to bands of purple—on this spring morning, then,... more...

CHAPTER 1 Once upon a time there was a nice family. Its name was Avory, and it lived in an old house in Chiswick, where the Thames is so sad on grey days and so gay on sunny ones. Mr.—or rather Captain—Avory was dead; he had been wounded at Spion Kop, and died a few years after. Mrs. Avory was thirty-five, and she had four children. The eldest was Janet, aged fourteen, and the youngest was Gregory... more...

THE CHOICE I Pondering over Alison's note, he suddenly recalled and verified some phrases which had struck him that summer on reading Harnack's celebrated History of Dogma, and around these he framed his reply. "To act as if faith in eternal life and in the living Christ was the simplest thing in the world, or a dogma to which one has to submit, is irreligious. . . It is Christian to pray... more...

INTRODUCTION. There is scarcely an UN-DRAMATIC writer of the Seventeenth Century, whose poems exhibit so many and such gross corruptions as those of the author of LUCASTA. In the present edition, which is the first attempt to present the productions of a celebrated and elegant poet to the admirers of this class of literature in a readable shape, both the text and the pointing have been amended... more...

A TRADITION OF THE TRIBE OF THE DOG-RIBS. Upon a narrow strait, between two tempestuous and stormy seas, lived the young man Chappewee, whose father, the old man Chappewee, was the first of men. The old man Chappewee, the first of men, when he first landed on the earth, near where the present Dog-ribs have their hunting-grounds, found the world a beautiful world, well stocked with food, and abounding... more...

PREFACE. This book deals with the Dialect of the English Language that is spoken in Ireland. As the Life of a people—according to our motto—is pictured in their speech, our picture ought to be a good one, for two languages were concerned in it—Irish and English. The part played by each will be found specially set forth in Chapters IV and VII; and in farther detail throughout the whole book. The... more...

APPEALTO THELEGISLATORS OF MASSACHUSETTS. I feel there is no need of apologizing to the Legislature of Massachusetts because a woman addresses them. Sir Walter Scott says: "The truth of Heaven was never committed to a tongue, however feeble, but it gave a right to that tongue to announce mercy, while it declared judgment." And in view of all that women have done, and are doing, intellectually... more...

INTRODUCTION Birth and Education. Of the life of Thomas Lodge comparatively little is definitely known. Yet, though even the year of his birth is uncertain, we are able from the meager facts that have come down to us to see that his life was typically Elizabethan. Like Sidney and like Raleigh, Lodge lived a varied and active life. He was born in either 1557 or 1558 of a rather prominent middle-class... more...

PREFACE The poems garnered up in this little volume were written at different periods in the life of the author, dating from her early girlhood up to recent years. They were not written with a view of making a book, each poem being the spontaneous outpouring of a deeply poetic nature and called forth by some experience that claimed her attention. The "Old Man of the Mountain," for instance, was... more...