The New Boys. Slegge said it was all “bosh;” for fifty years ago a boy at school had not learned to declare that everything which did not suit his taste was “rot.” So Slegge stood leaning up against the playground wall with a supercilious sneer upon his lip, and said it was all “bosh,” and only fit for children. The other fellows, he said, might make idiots of themselves if they liked, he... more...

A Boy at Sea. Many many years ago seem like yesterday, and I hope it will always be the same. For, just to be serious for a moment, what is the full stretch of the oldest man’s life to time? Just one star-wink, if the astronomers are right about the passage of light, and that the glitter of stars that we see now are only the rays which started from them away there in space long before we were born.... more...

CHAPTER I. THE COLONIES. HISTORY AND LOCATION. THE FIRST SETTLERS. The first reference to German settlers in Brazil we have from the pen of Hans Stade of Homberg in Hessen. Stade made two trips to Brazil; one in 1547 and one in 1549. In the latter instance he was shipwrecked but succeeded in landing safely near the present port of Santos in the state of São Paulo. As he was a skilled artillerist the... more...

THERE was once a little Brownie, who lived—where do you think he lived? in a coal-cellar.Now a coal-cellar may seem a most curious place to choose to live in; but then a Brownie is a curious creature—a fairy, and yet not one of that sort of fairies who fly about on gossamer wings, and dance in the moonlight, and so on. He never dances; and as to wings, what use would they be to him in a coal-cellar?... more...

CHAPTER 1. THE PSAMMEAD There were once four children who spent their summer holidays in a white house, happily situated between a sandpit and a chalkpit. One day they had the good fortune to find in the sandpit a strange creature. Its eyes were on long horns like snail's eyes, and it could move them in and out like telescopes. It had ears like a bat's ears, and its tubby body was shaped like... more...

PROLOGUE Years ago, when I was very small, we lived in a great house in a long, straight, brown-coloured street, in the east end of London.  It was a noisy, crowded street in the daytime; but a silent, lonesome street at night, when the gas-lights, few and far between, partook of the character of lighthouses rather than of illuminants, and the tramp, tramp of the policeman on his long beat seemed to... more...

CHAPTER I "I'VE VOLUNTEERED!" "Well, who is going to read the paper?" Amy Blackford stopped knitting for a moment, the half-finished sweater suspended inquiringly in the air, while she asked her question and gazed about impatiently at her busy group of friends. "It's your turn, anyhow, Mollie," she added, fingers flying and head bent as she resumed her work. "You... more...

I have committed sins, of course; but I have not committed enough of them to entitle me to the punishment of reduction to the bread and water of ordinary literature during six years when I might have been living on the fat diet spread for the righteous in Professor Dowden's Life of Shelley, if I had been justly dealt with. During these six years I have been living a life of peaceful ignorance. I... more...

CHAPTER I. JIMMY TORRANCE, JR.   The gymnasium was packed as Jimmy Torrance stepped into the ring for the final event of the evening that was to decide the boxing championship of the university. Drawing to a close were the nearly four years of his college career—profitable years, Jimmy considered them, and certainly successful up to this point. In the beginning of his senior year he had captained... more...

Medusa How did Medusa do her hair?The question fills me with despair.It must have caused her sore distressThat head of curling snakes to dress.Whenever after endless toilShe coaxed it finally to coil,The music of a Passing BandWould cause each separate hair to standOn end and sway and writhe and spit,—She couldn't "do a thing with it."And, being woman and awareOf such disaster to her... more...