I. THE PHLOGISTON THEORY IN CHEMISTRY The development of the science of chemistry from the "science" of alchemy is a striking example of the complete revolution in the attitude of observers in the field of science. As has been pointed out in a preceding chapter, the alchemist, having a preconceived idea of how things should be, made all his experiments to prove his preconceived theory; while... more...

CHAPTER I Rick Brant stretched luxuriously and slid down to a half-reclining, half-sitting position in his dad's favorite library armchair. He called, "Barby! Hurry up!" Don Scott looked up from his adjustment of the television picture. "What's the rush? The show hasn't started yet." Rick explained, "She likes the commercials." A moment later Barbara Brant... more...

Tommy hated Earth, knowing his mother might go home to Mars without him. Worse, would a robot secretly take her place?... Tommy Benton, on his first visit to Earth, found the long-anticipated wonders of twenty-first-century New York thrilling the first week, boring and unhappy the second week, and at the end of the third he was definitely ready to go home. The never-ending racket of traffic was torture... more...

INTRODUCTION This Supplement is designed to supply a double need: it furnishes an analytical index to the entire series of twenty volumes; and it affords a great deal of additional information, bearing on the subject-matter of these volumes, but which from its very nature it was impossible to incorporate in the text. This additional information includes biographical sketches of the characters mentioned... more...

Panic roused him—the black imp of panic that lived under the garish rug of this unfamiliar room and crawled out at dawn to nudge him awake and stare from the blank space to his left where Tillie's gray head should have been. His fists clenched in anger—at himself. He'd never been the sort to make allowance for his own weakness and didn't propose to begin doing so now, at age... more...

JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU THE MAN TO WHOM EXPRESSION WAS TRAVAIL From the "Confessions of Rousseau." It is strange to hear that those critics who spoke of Rousseau's "incomparable gift of expression," of his "easy, natural style," were ludicrously incorrect in their allusions. From his "Confessions" we learn that he had no gift of clear, fluent expression; that he was... more...

We had had so many office-boys before Gallegher came among us that they had begun to lose the characteristics of individuals, and became merged in a composite photograph of small boys, to whom we applied the generic title of "Here, you"; or "You, boy." We had had sleepy boys, and lazy boys, and bright, "smart" boys, who became so familiar on so short an acquaintance that we were... more...

Preface The author has had in mind a two-fold purpose in the preparation of this book. First, it is hoped that it may serve as a text or reference book for collegiate students of plant science who are seeking a proper foundation upon which to build a scientific knowledge of how plants grow. The late Dr. Charles E. Bessey, to whom I owe the beginning of my interest in plant life, once said to me:... more...

The death of this distinguished man must be recorded. An interesting résumé of his labors by M. Daubree has appeared, from which we take the following facts. After a training in his native town at the Lyceum of Metz, which furnished so many scholars to the Polytechnic school, Delesse was admitted at the age of twenty to this school. In 1839 he left to enter the Corps des Mines. From the beginning of... more...

BARBARA'S WEDDING The little city of Devondale, Ohio, had shaken off for one night at least the air of aristocratic calm that normally distinguished it from the busy mill towns on its right and left. Elm Avenue, its leading residence street, usually presented at this hour only an effect of watchful trees, dark shrubbery, shaded lamps, and remote domestic peace. Now, however, it had blossomed into... more...