CHAPTER I About the time the winner of the Baltimore Handicap flashed under the wire, Johnny Gamble started to tear up a bundle of nice pink tickets on Lady S. Just then Ashley Loring came by swiftly in the direction of the betting shed. Loring stopped and wheeled when he caught sight of him as did most men who knew him. "Hello, Johnny! I didn't know you had run over. How are you picking them... more...

INTRODUCTION The origins of this extraordinary book are sufficiently curious and sufficiently interesting to be stated in detail. They go back to some ten years ago, when the author, after the rustic adventures which she describes in the following pages, had definitely settled in Paris as a working sempstress. The existence of a working sempstress in Paris, as elsewhere, is very hard; it usually means... more...

CHAPTER I Somewhere, not far off on the still sea that held the tiny islet in a warm embrace, a boy's voice was singing "Napoli Bella." Vere heard the song as she sat in the sun with her face set towards Nisida and the distant peak of Ischia; and instinctively she shifted her position, and turned her head, looking towards the calm and untroubled water that stretched between her and Naples.... more...

It was last winter, after a twelve years' absence from New York, that I saw again, at one of the Jim Cumnors' dinners, my old friend Halston Merrick. The Cumnors' house is one of the few where, even after such a lapse of time, one can be sure of finding familiar faces and picking up old threads; where for a moment one can abandon one's self to the illusion that New York humanity is... more...

'Tis two score years since Carroll's art, With topsy-turvy magic,SentAlicewondering through a partHalf-comic and half-tragic. Enchanting Alice! Black-and-white Has made your deeds perennial;And naught save "Chaos and old Night"Can part you now fromTenniel; But still you are a Type, and based In Truth, likeLearandHamlet;And Types may be re-draped to tasteIn cloth-of-gold or camlet.... more...

A History of the McGuffey Readers THE BOOKS. Before me are four small books roughly bound in boards, the sides covered with paper. On the reverse of the title pages, two bear a copyright entry in the year 1836; the others were entered in 1837. They are the earliest editions of McGuffey's Eclectic Readers that have been found in a search lasting forty years. They represent the first efforts in an... more...

LESSON I COMMON SENSE: WHAT IS IT? One beautiful evening, Yoritomo-Tashi was strolling in the gardens of his master, Lang-Ho, listening to the wise counsels which he knew so well how to give in all attractiveness of allegory, when, suddenly, he paused to describe a part of the land where the gardener's industry was less apparent. Here parasitic plants had, by means of their tendrils, crept up the... more...

  A farmer built around his crop    A wall, and crowned his labors  By placing glass upon the top    To lacerate his neighbors,      Provided they at any time      Should feel disposed the wall to climb.   He also drove some iron pegs    Securely in the coping,  To tear the bare, defenceless legs    Of brats who, upward groping,      Might steal, despite the... more...

THE SONG OF THE KAZAK Kazak speeds ever toward the North,    Kazak has never heart for rest,Not on the field, nor in the wood,  Nor when in face of danger pressedHis steed the raging stream must breast! Kazak speeds ever toward the North,With him a mighty power brings,To win the honour of his land  Kazak his life unheeding flings—Till fame of him eternal sings! Kazak brought all SiberiaAt... more...

ACT I SCENE—"Johnny-The-Priest's" saloon near South Street, New York City. The stage is divided into two sections, showing a small back room on the right. On the left, forward, of the barroom, a large window looking out on the street. Beyond it, the main entrance—a double swinging door. Farther back, another window. The bar runs from left to right nearly the whole length of the rear... more...