A pathetic and almost melancholy interest attaches to this volume of the Baird Lectures. Their scholarly and accomplished author may be said to have entered on the last stage of the malady to which he succumbed when they were read for him in Blythswood Parish Church, Glasgow, by his friend and former student, Professor Robertson, the closing one, indeed, having been delivered but a few days before his... more...

Chapter I. The weekly bill. Smith's Hotel, 10 Dovermarle Street. Here we are in London again,—Francesca, Salemina, and I. Salemina is a philanthropist of the Boston philanthropists limited. I am an artist. Francesca is— It is very difficult to label Francesca. She is, at her present stage of development, just a nice girl; that is about all: the sense of humanity hasn't dawned upon her... more...

INTRODUCTION. We wish it to be distinctly understood at starting, that the present work is purely a cookery-book, written on the principles generally adopted by vegetarians; and as, until quite recently, there seemed to be in the minds of many some doubt as to the definition of vegetarianism, we will quote the following explanation from the head of the report of the London Vegetarian Society:—“The... more...

WASHINGTON CITY. Washington is the paradise of paradoxes,—a city of magnificent distances, but of still more magnificent discrepancies. Anything may be affirmed of it, everything denied. What it seems to be it is not; and although it is getting to be what it never was, it must always remain what it now is. It might be called a city, if it were not alternately populous and uninhabited; and it would be... more...

PREFACE A small boy who wanted to make a good impression once took his little sweetheart to an ice cream parlor. After he had vainly searched the list of edibles for something within his means, he whispered to the waiter, "Say, Mister, what you got that looks tony an' tastes nice for nineteen cents?" This is precisely the predicament in which many thousand people are today. Like the boy,... more...

CHAPTER I THE TAKU INLET It was just striking three as I came up the companion-stairs on to the deck of the Cottage City, into the clear topaz light of a June morning in Alaska: light that had not failed through all the night, for in this far northern latitude the sun only just dips beneath the horizon at midnight for an hour, leaving all the earth and sky still bathed in limpid yellow light, gently... more...

Chapter I. Landing of the Pilgrims. 1620-1621Arrival of the Mayflower.On the 11th of November, 1620, the storm-battered Mayflower, with its band of one hundred and one Pilgrims, first caught sight of the barren sand-hills of Cape Cod. The shore presented a cheerless scene even for those weary of a more than four months voyage upon a cold and tempestuous sea. But, dismal as the prospect was, after... more...

PREFACE. Sæmund, son of Sigfus, the reputed collector of the poems bearing his name, which is sometimes also called the Elder, and the Poetic, Edda, was of a highly distinguished family, being descended in a direct line from King Harald Hildetonn. He was born at Oddi, his paternal dwelling in the south of Iceland, between the years 1054 and 1057, or about 50 years after the establishment by law of the... more...

OLIVIER'S BRAG The Emperor Charlemagne and his twelve peers, having taken the palmer's staff at Saint-Denis, made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. They prostrated themselves before the tomb of Our Lord, and sat in the thirteen chairs of the great hall wherein Jesus Christ and his Apostles met together to celebrate the blessed sacrifice of the Mass. Then they fared to Constantinople, being fain to... more...

Here begynneth a ryght profytable treatyse cõpendiously drawen out of many & dyuers wrytynges of holy men / to dyspose men to be vertuously occupyed in theyr myndes & prayers. And declared the Pater noster. Aue. & Credo. in our moder tonge with many other deuoute prayers in lyke wyse medefull to religyous people as to the laye people with many other moost holsomest Instruccyons / as here... more...