HEART-TO-HEART TALKS. (The PRESIDENT of the United States and Mr. GERARD.) The President. Here you are then at last, my dear Mr. GERARD. I am afraid you have had a long and uncomfortable journey. Mr. Gerard. Don't say a word about that, Mr. President. It's all in the day's work, and, anyhow, it's an immense pleasure to be back in one's own country. The President. Yes, I can... more...

Fleacatcher.—Yes, the trout in the river Itching (this is the only correct spelling) are red, and, before they are boiled, raw. The best method of catching them is to tickle them. When you have hooked an Itching trout, you first scratch him, and then cook him. Novice.—We only knew one man who could make a decent rod, and he died twenty years ago. Remember the old adage so dear to Izaak, Qui parcit... more...

When observing the spectrum formed by looking at a long vertical slit through a simple prism, I noticed an elongated dark spot running up and down in the blue, and following the motion of the eye as it moved up and down the spectrum, but refusing to pass out of the blue into the other colours. It was plain that the spot belonged both to the eye and to the blue part of the spectrum. The result to which... more...

FOREWORD Charles A. Stewart's A Virginia Village is a charming depiction of the early days of Falls Church. It is the earliest attempt to put on paper the story of the Falls Church area. In addition to interesting stories about people and organizations and life generally in the small town of 80 years ago, the book contains photographs of 107 Falls Church houses, stores, and churches then standing.... more...

LONELY VALLEYS The maid, smartly capped in starched ruffled muslin and black, who admitted them to the somber luxury of the rectory, hesitated in unconcealed sulky disfavor. "Doctor Goodlowe has hardly started dinner," she asserted. "Just ask him to come out for a little," the man repeated. He was past middle age, awkward in harsh ill-fitting and formal clothes and with a gaunt... more...

INTRODUCTIONTHE WORKMANSHIP OF THE ONE-ACT PLAY The one-act play is a new form of the drama and more emphatically a new form of literature. Its possibilities began to attract the attention of European and American writers in the last decade of the nineteenth century, those years when so many dramatic traditions lapsed and so many precedents were established. It is significant that the oldest play in... more...

I INTRODUCES THE BOYS It was late in the fall of the second year of the civil war that I rejoined my company at Santa Fé, New Mexico, from detached service in the Army of the Potomac. The boom of the sunrise gun awoke me on the morning after my arrival, and I hastened to attend reveille roll-call. As I descended the steps of the officers' quarters the men of the four companies composing the... more...

CHAPTER I. During the noon intermission of a sunny April day a small group of boys assembled near the steps of Oakdale Academy to talk baseball; for the opening of the season was at hand, and the germ of the game had already begun to make itself felt in their blood. Roger Eliot, the grave, reliable, steady-headed captain of the nine, who had scored such a pronounced success as captain of the eleven the... more...

CHAPTER I A FRIEND IN NEED A light breeze, scented with the smell of the firs, was blowing down the inlet, and the tiny ripples it chased across the water splashed musically against the bows of the canoe. They met her end-on, sparkling in the warm sunset light, gurgled about her sides, and trailed away astern in two divergent lines as the paddles flashed and fell. There was a thud as the blades struck... more...

WAR UNDER THE LAW OF NATIONS A DUEL. But no classical authority is needed for this designation. War, as conducted under International Law, between two organized nations, is in all respects a duel, according to the just signification of this word,—differing from that between two individuals only in the number of combatants. The variance is of proportion merely, each nation being an individual who... more...