PREFACE The pessimistic tone of Continental fiction, and its pronounced preference for minute and morbid analysis, are quite revolutionizing the modern novel. Fiction is ceasing to be a branch of art, and fast becoming, instead, a branch of science. The aim of the novelist, apparently, is to lecture instead of to amuse his readers. Plot, incident, and description are being sacrificed more and more to... more...

INTRODUCTION HOW WE CAME INTO THE GARDEN It was by a strange irony of Fate that we found ourselves reunited for a summer's outing, in a French garden, in July, 1914. With the exception of the Youngster, we had hardly met since the days of our youth. We were a party of unattached people, six men, two women, your humble servant, and the Youngster, who was an outsider. With the exception of the... more...

Chapter 1 Sir Walter Elliot, of Kellynch Hall, in Somersetshire, was a man who, for his own amusement, never took up any book but the Baronetage; there he found occupation for an idle hour, and consolation in a distressed one; there his faculties were roused into admiration and respect, by contemplating the limited remnant of the earliest patents; there any unwelcome sensations, arising from domestic... more...

SECTION I. PRINCIPLES OF ART. 1. Perfect taste is the faculty of receiving the greatest possible pleasure from those material sources which are attractive to our moral nature in its purity and perfection; but why we receive pleasure from some forms and colours, and not from others, is no more to be asked or answered than why we like sugar and dislike wormwood. 2. The temper by which right taste is... more...

"What do you call it?" the buyer asked Jenkins. "I named it 'Journey Home' but you can think up a better name for it if you want. I'll guarantee that it sells, though. There's nothing like it on any midway." "I'd like to try it out first, of course," Allenby said. "Star-Time uses only the very best, you know." "Yes, I know," Jenkins said.... more...

BROKEN “The expected has happened, I see,” said Macloud, laying aside the paper he had been reading, and raising his hand for a servant. “I thought it was the unexpected that happens,” Hungerford drawled, languidly. “What do you mean?” “Royster & Axtell have been thrown into bankruptcy. Liabilities of twenty million, assets problematical.” “You don’t say!” ejaculated... more...

TO MY READERS Some of my youthful readers are developing wonderful imaginations. This pleases me. Imagination has brought mankind through the Dark Ages to its present state of civilization. Imagination led Columbus to discover America. Imagination led Franklin to discover electricity. Imagination has given us the steam engine, the telephone, the talking-machine and the automobile, for these things had... more...

CHAPTER I AN INTRODUCTORY DISASTER Early in the spring of the year 1884 the three-masted schooner Castor, from San Francisco to Valparaiso, was struck by a tornado off the coast of Peru. The storm, which rose with frightful suddenness, was of short duration, but it left the Castor a helpless wreck. Her masts had snapped off and gone overboard, her rudder-post had been shattered by falling wreckage, and... more...

PREFACE. “It is the duty—the imperative duty—of every individual (however humble) to express conscientiously, but calmly, his public opinions, for by such means truth is elicited.” Hence it may be permitted the writer of the annexed Letter to observe, that a momentous question is now brought to the notice of the people of Great Britain,—that it ought not to be neglected, until perhaps a voice... more...

"What do you make of it?" Commander Jed Hargraves asked huskily.Two planets circling Vega! But a more amazing discovery waited the explorers when they landed!Ron Val, busy at the telescope, was too excited to look up from the eye-piece. "There are at least two planets circling Vega!" he said quickly. "There may be other planets farther out, but I can see two plainly. And Jed, the... more...