CHAPTER I Mid June, and the eager spring had burst triumphant into the North Woods. The mountain tops, still white hostages of the retreating winter, fettered in frozen manacles, were alone in their reminiscence of the implacable season. And even they made their joyous offerings to the newborn springtime, pouring a thousand flashing cascades to leap down the rocky sides and seek out the hidden nooks... more...

CHAPTER I There were very few people upon Platform Number Twenty-one of Liverpool Street Station at a quarter to nine on the evening of April 2—possibly because the platform in question is one of the most remote and least used in the great terminus. The station-master, however, was there himself, with an inspector in attendance. A dark, thick-set man, wearing a long travelling ulster and a Homburg... more...

PREFACE It is a harder thing than it ought to be to write openly and frankly of things private and sacred. "Secretum meum mihi!"—"My secret is my own!"—cried St. Francis in a harrowed moment. But I believe that the instinct to guard and hoard the inner life is one that ought to be resisted. Secrecy seems to me now a very uncivilised kind of virtue, after all! We have all of us, or... more...

THREE DEDICATIONS TO EDMUND CLERIHEW BENTLEY THE DEDICATION OF THE MAN WHO WAS THURSDAY A cloud was on the mind of men, and wailing went the weather,Yea, a sick cloud upon the soul when we were boys together.Science announced nonentity and art admired decay;The world was old and ended: but you and I were gay.Round us in antic order their crippled vices came—Lust that had lost its laughter, fear that... more...

When they are very little just only a baby you can never tell which one is to be a lady. There are some when they feel it inside them that it has been with them that there was once so very little of them, that they were a baby, helpless and no conscious feeling in them, that they knew nothing then when they were kissed and dandled and fixed by others who knew them when they could know nothing inside... more...

THE DREAMER Roger was only seven. He was tall for his age and very thin. He had a thick crop of black hair and his eyes were large and precisely the color of the summer sky that lifted above the Moores' back yard. These were the little boy's only claims to beauty, for even at this time Roger's face was too much of the intellectual type to be handsome. Beauty is seldom intelligent.... more...

CHAPTER I.   THE SECRET WALK WITH GOD (i.). Pastor, for the round of toil See the toiling soul is fed; Shut the chamber, light the oil, Break and eat the Spirit's bread; Life to others would'st thou bring? Live thyself upon thy King. Let me explain in this first sentence that when in these pages I address "my Younger Brethren," I mean brethren in the Christian Ministry in the Church... more...

Chapter I Miriam sat in her lowly cabin, painfully rocking her body to and fro; for a great sorrow had fallen upon her life. She had been the mother of three children, two had died in their infancy, and now her last, her loved and only child was gone, but not like the rest, who had passed away almost as soon as their little feet had touched the threshold of existence. She had been entangled in the... more...

I She was very old, and therefore it was very hard for her to make up her mind to die. I am aware that this is not at all the general view, but that it is believed, as old age must be near death, that it prepares the soul for that inevitable event. It is not so, however, in many cases. In youth we are still so near the unseen out of which we came, that death is rather pathetic than... more...

Part I. "Gold may be dear bought." A narrow street with dreadful "wynds" and "vennels" running back from it was the High street of Glasgow at the time my story opens. And yet, though dirty, noisy and overcrowded with sin and suffering, a flavor of old time royalty and romance lingered amid its vulgar surroundings; and midway of its squalid length a quaint brown frontage kept... more...