CAPTURE OF THE "SURVEYOR." — WORK OF THE GUNBOAT FLOTILLA. — OPERATIONS ON CHESAPEAKE BAY. — COCKBURN'S DEPREDATIONS. — CRUISE OF THE "ARGUS." — HER CAPTURE BY THE "PELICAN." — BATTLE OF THE "ENTERPRISE" AND "BOXER." — END OF THE YEAR 1813 ON THE OCEAN. ith the capture of the "Chesapeake" in June, 1813, we abandoned our story of the... more...

A RETIRED GENTLEMAN From Bishen Singh Saktawut, Subedar Major, 215th Indurgurh [Todd's] Rajputs, now at Lyndhurst, Hampshire, England, this letter is sent to Madhu Singh, Sawant, Risaldar Major [retired] 146th [Dublana] Horse, on his fief which he holds under the Thakore Sahib of Pech at Bukani by the River, near Chiturkaira, Kotah, Rajputana, written in the fifth month of the year 1916, English... more...

AN AID TO FAITH. The certainty of those things which most surely are believed among us, is a matter quite distinct from their antecedent probability or improbability. We know, and take for facts, that Cromwell and Napoleon existed, and are persuaded that their characters and lives were such as history reports them: but it is another thing, and one eminently calculated to disturb any disbeliever of such... more...

The present volume is an attempt to carry out a plan which William James is known to have formed several years before his death. In 1907 he collected reprints in an envelope which he inscribed with the title ‘Essays in Radical Empiricism’; and he also had duplicate sets of these reprints bound, under the same title, and deposited for the use of students in the general Harvard Library, and in the... more...

CHAPTER I.BW.—HB. The Washington family is of an ancient English stock, the genealogy of which has been traced up to the century immediately succeeding the Conquest. Among the knights and barons who served under the Count Palatine, Bishop of Durham, to whom William the Conqueror had granted that important See, was W H. At that period surnames were commonly derived from castles or estates; and de... more...

BOTTOMLESS SWAMP It was Construction Foreman Cassidy who gave the place its name when he answered his employer’s laconic telegram. Stirling, the great contractor, frequently expressed himself with forcible terseness; but when he flung the message across to his secretary as he sat one morning in his private room in an Ottawa hotel, the latter raised his eyebrows questioningly. He knew his employer in... more...

YOUNG SWAIGDERorTHE FORCE OF RUNES It was the young Swaigder,   With the little ball he played;The ball flew into the Damsel’s lap,   And pale her cheeks it made. The ball flew into the Damsel’s bower.   He went of it in quest;Before he out of the bower came,   Much care had filled his breast! “The ball, the ball thou shouldst not fling,   Shouldst cast it not at me;There sits a maid in... more...

INFIDEL!The name has been bestowed on me by several Christian gentlemen as a reproach, but to my ears it has a quaint and not unpleasing sound. Infidel! "The notorious infidel editor of the Clarion" is the form used by one True Believer. The words recurred to my mind suddenly, while I was taking my favourite black pipe for a walk along "the pleasant Strand," and I felt a smile glimmer... more...

GEORGE and WILLIAM HOPE were the only children of a gentleman of fortune, who lived in a fine house at the entrance of a pretty village in Berkshire. It was this worthy gentleman’s misfortune to be the father of two very perverse and disobedient sons; who, instead of trying to please him by dutiful and obliging conduct, grieved him continually by their unworthy behaviour, and then were so wicked as... more...

You who know something of the irony of life in general, and still more of it in the present particular, will not be surprised that, having made two strict rules for my guidance in the writing of this book, I break them both in the first page! Indeed, I can hear you say, though without any touch of the satirical, that it was only natural that I should do so. The first of my two rules, heartily approved... more...