CHAPTER I "I said you'd do something," said Daphne, leaning back easily in her long chair. I stopped swinging my legs and looked at her. "Did you, indeed," I said coldly. My sister nodded dreamily. "Then you lied, darling. In your white throat," I said pleasantly. "By the way, d'you know if the petrol's come?" "I don't even care," said Daphne.... more...

CHAPTER I FROM SCHOOL TO LIFE-WORK Birth—Parentage—School-days—Choice of Medical Profession—Charing Cross Hospital—End of Medical Studies—Admission to Naval Medical Service. Some men are born to greatness: even before their arrival in the world their future is marked out for them. All the advantages that wealth and the experience of friends can bring attend their growth to manhood, and... more...

PREFACE When this book was projected, some one asked, "What is there to say about Browning's heroines beyond what he said himself?"—and the question, though it could not stay me, did chill momentarily my primal ardour. Soon, however, the restorative answer presented itself. "If there were nothing to say about Browning's heroines beyond what he said himself, it would be a bad... more...

I "It is so good of you to come early," said Mrs. Porter, as Alice Langham entered the drawing-room. "I want to ask a favor of you. I'm sure you won't mind. I would ask one of the debutantes, except that they're always so cross if one puts them next to men they don't know and who can't help them, and so I thought I'd just ask you, you're so good-natured.... more...

CHAPTER I. In which the Reader is introduced to a Family of peculiar Construction. It was at the close of an afternoon in May, that a party might have been seen gathered around a table covered with all those delicacies that, in the household of a rich Southern planter, are regarded as almost necessaries of life. In the centre stood a dish of ripe strawberries, their plump red sides peeping through the... more...

INTRODUCTION. The writer of the following pages was dandled upon the knee of a worthy sire, who had spent eight years of his life in the struggle for Independence, and taught me the name of Col. Bigelow, long before I was able to articulate his name. Many have been the times, while sitting on my father's lap around the old hearthstone, now more than fifty years since, that I listened to affecting... more...

INTRODUCTORY NOTE ROBERT BROWNING stands, in respect to his origin and his career, in marked contrast to the two aristocratic poets beside whose dramas his "Blot in the 'Scutcheon" is here printed. His father was a bank clerk and a dissenter at a time when dissent meant exclusion from Society; the poet went neither to one of the great public schools nor to Oxford or Cambridge; and no... more...

THE RAVENS AND THE ANGELS. (A Story of the Middle Ages.) By the Author of "Chronicles of the Schönberg-Cotta Family." I. In those old days, in that old city, they called the cathedral—and they thought it—the house of God. The cathedral was the Father's house for all, and therefore it was loved and honored, and enriched with lavish treasures of wealth and work, beyond any other... more...

THE FINDING OF MOSES Many long years had passed since the days when Joseph's brothers and their families had settled in the land of Egypt. They were a great nation in numbers now, but the Egyptians still ruled over them, and used them as servants. The Pharaoh who had been so kind to the shepherds from Canaan was dead long ago, and the new kings, or Pharaohs as they were called, hated foreigners,... more...

IN WHICH I SLIP Sultan was a horse for a man, long and regular in his stride, perfect in action, quick to obey, cat-like at need. I might have ridden him from the day on which the blacksmith drank his colt-ale, for we understood each other exactly, and I was as comfortable on his back as in my bed at the Hanyards. In the open road at the mere-end, he settled down into a steady, loping trot, and I was... more...