FISHERMAN'S LUCK Has it ever fallen in your way to notice the quality of the greetings that belong to certain occupations? There is something about these salutations in kind which is singularly taking and grateful to the ear. They are as much better than an ordinary "good day" or a flat "how are you?" as a folk-song of Scotland or the Tyrol is better than the futile love-ditty of... more...

BETSEY AND I ARE OUT. Draw up the papers, lawyer, and make 'em good and stout;For things at home are crossways, and Betsey and I are out.We, who have worked together so long as man and wife,Must pull in single harness for the rest of our nat'ral life. "What is the matter?" say you. I swan it's hard to tell!Most of the years behind us we've passed by very well;I have no other... more...

CHAPTER I. A MILL-HAND'S MANSION. 'It's a dreadful thing to have a father you don't respect,' said Sarah Clay, as she walked into the gilded and beautifully painted drawing-room of the aforesaid father's mansion in Yorkshire. Her mother gave a little, sharp scream, and let fall the book she was holding in her hand. Sarah came forward swiftly, picked it up, and turned it... more...

CHAPTER I EVENING IN GLENAVELIN From the heart of a great hill land Glenavelin stretches west and south to the wider Gled valley, where its stream joins with the greater water in its seaward course. Its head is far inland in a place of mountain solitudes, but its mouth is all but on the lip of the sea, and salt breezes fight with the flying winds of the hills. It is a land of green meadows on the brink... more...

Chapter One. The stout trading brig Amity, Samuel Mudge master and part owner, was gliding up Plymouth Sound on a summer’s evening towards her accustomed berth in Catwater, a few years before the termination of the last war between England and France. She had no pilot on board; indeed, her crew averred that the old craft could find the way in and out of the harbour by herself; at all events, her... more...

CHAPTER I All my life I have had an awareness of other times and places.  I have been aware of other persons in me.—Oh, and trust me, so have you, my reader that is to be.  Read back into your childhood, and this sense of awareness I speak of will be remembered as an experience of your childhood.  You were then not fixed, not crystallized.  You were plastic, a soul in flux, a consciousness and an... more...

CHAPTER I Parentage and Early Life—Appointment to West Point—Virginian Room- Mates—Acquaintance with General Winfield Scott—Character of the West Point Training—Importance of Learning how to Obey—A trip to New York on a Wager—The West Point Bible-class—Dismissed from the Academy Without Trial—Intercession of Stephen A. Douglas— Restoration to Cadet Duty—James B. McPherson—John... more...

"1923." [The following is the description by Professor J. Scott, F.R.S., of his recent Airship Journey across the old Bed of the North Sea. July 1, 1923.] It is perhaps unnecessary for me to state the objects and purpose of my journey of last week, as it would be false modesty in me not to recognise the great interest taken by the geologic and antiquarian worlds in my proposed enterprise. For... more...

I. GENOA I The traveller who on his way to Italy passes along the Riviera di Ponente, through Marseilles, Nice, and Mentone to Ventimiglia, or crossing the Alps touches Italian soil, though scarcely Italy indeed, at Turin, on coming to Genoa finds himself really at last in the South, the true South, of which Genoa la Superba is the gate, her narrow streets, the various life of her port, her picturesque... more...

Those adventurous gentlemen who derive exhilaration from peril, and extract febrifuge for the high pressure of a too exuberant constitution from the difficulties of the Alps, cannot find such peaks as the Aiguille Verte and the Matterhorn, with their friable and precipitous cliffs, among the Rocky Mountains. The geological processes have been gentler in evolving the latter than the former, and in the... more...