CHAPTER I. Providential Intervention.--Nature and Providence alike Mysterious.--An Unseen Hand shaping Human Events.--The Author urged to enter the Ministry.--Shrinks from the Responsibility.--Flies to Modern Tarshish.--Heads for Iowa.--Gets Stuck in the Mud.--Smitten by a Northern Gale.--Turns Aside to see the Eldorado.--Finds Himself Face to Face with the Itinerancy. The ways of Providence are... more...

CHAPTER I OUT OF THE STORM Taxicab No. 92,381 skidded crazily on the icy pavement of Atlantic Avenue. Spike Walters, its driver, cursed roundly as he applied the brakes and with difficulty obtained control of the little closed car. Depressing the clutch pedal, he negotiated the frozen thoroughfare and parked his car in the lee of the enormous Union Station, which bulked forbiddingly in the December... more...

PREFACE It seems strange that, in narrating events and analyzing an organization existing in the United States of America in the year 1921, the most appropriate introduction to the subject consists of a few pages from the history of Germany during the Middle Ages. There existed in medi?val Germany a secret organization, which, in its highest stage of development is said to have numbered over 200,000... more...

CHAPTER I. THIS happened a very few years after, my marriage, and is one of those feeling incidents in life that we never forget. My husband's income was moderate, and we found it necessary to deny ourselves many little articles of ornament and luxury, to the end that there might be no serious abatement in the comforts of life. In furnishing our house, we had been obliged to content ourselves... more...

The CHEMISTRY OF FOOD. When Virgil composed his immortal "Bucolics," and Varro indited his profound Essays on Agriculture, the inhabitants of the British Islands were almost completely ignorant of the art of cultivating the soil. The rude spoils torn from the carcasses of savage animals protected the bodies of their hardly less savage victors; and the produce of the chase served almost... more...

The Seven Years’ War had enlisted England’s rich help in men and money. A powerful army of one hundred thousand men, composed of English soldiers, of twenty-four thousand Hessians, of Hanoverians and Brunswickers, enabled Frederick of Prussia to continue a resistance which otherwise he could not have maintained for two years. The North German states were not Prussian vassals, but allies of England... more...

INTRODUCTION The Battle of Poitiers was fought ten years and four weeks after that of Crécy. The singular similarity between the two actions will be pointed out upon a later page. For the moment it must suffice to point out that Poitiers and Crécy form unique historical parallels, distinguishing like double summits the English successes of Edward III.’s army upon the Continent and of the first part... more...

CHAPTER I IN WHICH I LEARN FOR THE FIRST TIME THAT I HAVE AN UNCLE The first remembrance I hold of my father is of a dark-suited tall man of an unchanging gravity on all occasions. He had, moreover, a manner of saying "Ay, ay," which I early came to regard as the prologue to some definite prohibition; as when I asked him (I being then but a scrubbed boy) for his great sword, to give it to a... more...

BAYARD TAYLOR. SELECTIONS FROM THE EXPERIENCES OF THE A.C. "Bridgeport! Change cars for the Naugatuck Railroad!" shouted the conductor of the New York and Boston Express Train, on the evening of May 27, 1858.... Mr. Johnson, carpet-bag in hand, jumped upon the platform, entered the office, purchased a ticket for Waterbury, and was soon whirling in the Naugatuck train towards his destination. On... more...

The male population of Middleton, Ohio, in the early summer of 186- appeared to consist altogether of old men and boys. True, a few young men, most of them dressed in blue coats with brass buttons, were to be seen on the streets, but nearly all of them carried their arms in slings, and one tall lad of twenty, who had once been the best runner in the village, hobbled along on crutches, with an empty... more...