CHAPTER I THE DRAMATIC CRITIC   His Qualifications The production of a play in the Russian tongue renders topical a phrase once used, not unhappily, by Mr Cecil Raleigh concerning the qualifications of the dramatic critic. After listening to a somewhat extravagant speech about the duties of the critic, he said that the dramatic critic ought, apparently, to be a "polyglot archangel." During the... more...

CHAPTER I The road from Wellmouth Centre to East Wellmouth is not a good one; even in dry weather and daylight it is not that. For the first two miles it winds and twists its sandy way over bare hills, with cranberry swamps and marshy ponds in the hollows between. Then it enters upon a three-mile stretch bordered with scrubby pines and bayberry thickets, climbing at last a final hill to emerge upon the... more...

RADA SCENE—_A guest-chamber, the typical living-room of a prosperous village doctor in the Balkans. On the left, a small window and an entrance door. On the right, a door leading into a bedroom. At the back, an open fire of logs is burning brightly. Over the fireplace is the eikonostasis, with three richly coloured and gilded eikons, the central one of the Madonna. The light, which is never allowed... more...

The Viol Seraphine. Introduction.--The clear tones of a viol or bass viol are generally admitted to be more melodious than those produced by other kinds of instruments, and many have expressed a desire to see an instrument so constructed as to be played with keys, like the organ or piano forte, and give the tones of the violin. This is the character of the instrument here introduced. It is elegant in... more...

My beautiful new watch had run eighteen months without losing or gaining, and without breaking any part of its machinery or stopping. I had come to believe it infallible in its judgments about the time of day, and to consider its constitution and its anatomy imperishable. But at last, one night, I let it run down. I grieved about it as if it were a recognized messenger and forerunner of calamity. But... more...

ALFRED DE VIGNY The reputation of Alfred de Vigny has endured extraordinary vicissitudes in France. First he was lauded as the precursor of French romantic poetry and stately prose; then he sank in semi-oblivion, became the curiosity of criticism, died in retirement, and was neglected for a long time, until the last ten years or so produced a marked revolution of taste in France. The supremacy of... more...

OUR NATIONAL FINANCES. Our national finances are involved in extreme peril. Our public debt exceeds $720,000,000, and is estimated by the Secretary of the Treasury, on the 1st of July next, at $1,122,297,403, and on the 1st of July, 1864, at $1,744,685,586. When we reflect that this is nearly one half the debt of England, and bearing almost double the rate of interest, it is clear that we are... more...

I Ferdinand Foch was born at Tarbes on October 2, 1851. His father, of good old Pyrenean stock and modest fortune, was a provincial official whose office corresponded to that of secretary of state for one of our commonwealths. So the family lived in Tarbes, the capital of the department called the Upper Pyrénées. The mother of Ferdinand was Sophie Dupré, born at Argèles, twenty miles south of... more...

A Lover in Homespun. Onesime Charest, farmer, of L'Orignal, was a happy man. As he drove through the quaint little French-Canadian village, on his way to the railway station, he was saluted by the villagers with much ceremony. Everyone knew perfectly well just what it was that was taking farmer Charest to the station this beautiful hazy afternoon. Over a week had now elapsed since he received the... more...

It is wonderfully exciting to read the adventures of a shipwrecked mariner; to find him cast away on a desert island, destitute of everything that before seemed necessary to his very existence; to see him settling himself down in a strange and untried form of life, substituting one thing for another, doing altogether without some other thing, turning constantly from expedient to expedient, bending to... more...