CHAPTER I. TIFLIS—BAKU. "Ceci non!" A spacious apartment, its polished parquet strewn with white bearskins and the thickest and softest of Persian rugs; its panelled walls hung with Oriental tapestries, costly daggers, pistols, and shields of barbaric, but beautiful, workmanship, glistening with gold and silver. Every detail of the room denotes the artistic taste of the owner. Inlaid tables... more...

Belinda Act I It is a lovely April afternoon–a foretaste of summer–in Belinda's garden. Betty, a middle-aged servant, is fastening a hammock–its first appearance this year–to a tree down L. In front there is a garden-table, with a deck-chair on the right of it and a straight-backed one to the left. There are books, papers, and magazines on the table. Belinda, of whom we shall know more... more...

CHAPTER I NIGHT COURT Officer 4434 beat his freezing hands together as he stood with his back to the snow-laden north-easter, which rattled the creaking signboards of East Twelfth Street, and covered, with its merciful shroud of wet flakes, the ash-barrels, dingy stoops, gaudy saloon porticos and other architectural beauties of the Avenue corner. Officer 4434 was on "fixed post." This is an... more...

CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTORY.[1]--People living in the United States owe respect and obedience to not less than four different governments; that is, to four forms of organized authority. They have duties, as citizens of a township or civil district, as citizens of a county, as citizens of some one of the States, and as citizens of the United States. All persons are, or have been, members of a family; some... more...

Henry Seton Merriman published his first novel, "Young Mistley," in 1888, when he was twenty-six years old. Messrs. Bentley's reader, in his critique on the book, spoke of its "powerful situations" and unconventionality of treatment: and, while dwelling at much greater length on its failings, declared, in effect, its faults to be the right faults, and added that, if "Young... more...

there are several questions you would like to ask at the very beginning of this history. First: Who is the Monarch of Mo? And why is he called the Magical Monarch? And where is Mo, anyhow? And why have you never heard of it before? And can it be reached by a railroad or a trolley-car, or must one walk all the way? These questions I realize should be answered before we (that "we" means you and... more...

FOREWORD Jimmy Collins used periodically to try to change his name to Jim Collins, but he never could make it stick. There was something about him that made everybody call him Jimmy. He did sign his wonderful article in the Saturday Evening Post about dive testing “Jim Collins,” but his friends kidded him so much about wanting to be a “he-man” that he went back to Jimmy in his... more...

THE SERAPION BRETHREN.   "Look at the question how one will, the bitter conviction is not to be got rid of by persuasion, or by force, that what has been never, never can be again. It is useless to contend with the irresistible power of Time, which goes on continually creating by a process of constant destruction. Nothing survives save the shadowy reflected images left by that part of our lives... more...

CHAPTER I. It was a warm June evening, and the family was taking the air on the back porch—father and mother, two stalwart young men, the elder sons, two slender girls, and a romping boy of nine—the little Benjamin of the tribe. It was a placid homelike group; father deep in the daily paper and his easy-chair, mother absorbed in chat with the girls even while keeping watchful eye on "the... more...

CHAPTER I. THE MOVEMENT AND THE MAN. In the year 1884 the Republic of Aureataland was certainly not in a flourishing condition. Although most happily situated (it lies on the coast of South America, rather to the north—I mustn't be more definite), and gifted with an extensive territory, nearly as big as Yorkshire, it had yet failed to make that material progress which had been hoped by its... more...