Chapter I THE CARPET-KNIGHT AND THE LADY The girl paused and steadied herself for a moment against a field gate. Her breath came fast in little sobbing pants. Her dainty shoes were soiled with dust and there was a great tear in her skirt. Very slowly, very fearfully, she turned her head. Her cheeks were the colour of chalk, her eyes were filled with terror. If a cart were coming, or those labourers in... more...

CHAPTER I. "Hold, Stranger!" The words fell from beautiful lips under the most exciting circumstances. A boat rocked upon the calm water that murmured along the shore, when a young man came down from the upper bank of white drift sand, and seized the tiller rope. He had the rope in his hand, his arm was upraised to draw the boat to his feet, when he was startled by hearing the words with which... more...

CHAPTER I Peter Van Hoosen was a result of Dutch Calvinism, and Dutch industry and thrift; also, of a belief in the Day of Judgment. The first motives were inherited tendencies, carefully educated; the last one, a conscious principle, going down to the depths of his nature and sharply dividing whatever was just and right from whatever was false and wrong. People whose religion was merely religiosity... more...

An Explosion "Are you all ready, Tom?" "All ready, Mr. Sharp," replied a young man, who was stationed near some complicated apparatus, while the questioner, a dark man, with a nervous manner, leaned over a large tank. "I'm going to turn on the gas now," went on the man. "Look out for yourself. I'm not sure what may happen." "Neither am I, but I'm ready... more...

“The land where I was born” was, in my childhood, a great battleground. War—as we then thought the vastest of all wars, not only that had been, but that could ever be—swept over it. I never knew in those days a man who had not been in the war. So, “The War” was the main subject in every discussion and it was discussed with wonderful acumen. Later it took on a different relation to the new... more...

LAMENT I Come, Heraclitus and Simonides,Come with your weeping and sad elegies:Ye griefs and sorrows, come from all the landsWherein ye sigh and wail and wring your hands:Gather ye here within my house todayAnd help me mourn my sweet, whom in her MayUngodly Death hath ta'en to his estate,Leaving me on a sudden desolate.'Tis so a serpent glides on some shy nestAnd, of the tiny nightingales... more...

BILL THE MINDER Old Crispin, the mushroom gatherer, and his good wife Chloe had ten children, and nine of them were bad-tempered. There was Chad, the youngest and most bad-tempered of the lot, Hannibal and Quentin the twins, Randall with the red head, Noah, Ratchett the short-sighted, Nero the worrit, weeping Biddulph and Knut. The only good-tempered child was a little girl named Boadicea. It is well... more...

CHAPTER I AROUND THE BREAKFAST TABLE "Well, wife," said Mr. Benjamin Stanton, as he sat down to a late breakfast, "I had a letter from Ohio yesterday." "From Ohio? Who should write you from Ohio? Anyone I know?" "My sister, Margaret, you remember, moved out there with her husband ten years ago." "Oh, it's from her, is it?" said Mrs. Stanton, indifferently.... more...

CHAPTER I FINDING A PLACE OF REFUGE The migration of the blacks from the Southern States to those offering them better opportunities is nothing new. The objective here, therefore, will be not merely to present the causes and results of the recent movement of the Negroes to the North but to connect this event with the periodical movements of the blacks to that section, from about the year 1815 to the... more...

Richard Moyer, senior partner of the firm of Moyer & Perkins, read that letter over twice before he called in the man who had helped him make the importing of high grade groceries from England a most profitable business for over twenty years. He simply handed the letter over to Paul Perkins without a word of explanation. The latter read it through and handed it back in equal silence, but the hand... more...