FOR YOU, MOTHER I have a dream for you, Mother,Like a soft thick fringe to hide your eyes.I have a surprise for you, Mother,Shaped like a strange butterfly.I have found a way of thinkingTo make you happy;I have made a song and a poemAll twisted into one.If I sing, you listen;If I think, you know.I have a secret from everybody in the world full of peopleBut I cannot always remember how it goes;It is a... more...

INTRODUCTORY. The year 1882 was the centenary of Froebel's birth, and in the present "plentiful lack" of faithful translations of Froebel's own words we proposed to the Froebel Society to issue a translation of the "Education of Man," which we would undertake to make at our own cost, that the occasion might be marked in a manner worthy of the English branch of the Kindergarten... more...

PROLOGUE [AFRICA AND HER SISTERS.] Some fifteen years now I have been her guest,For all this land's hers, tho' she does not reign.She's but a ward, at what late age she'll gainHer freedom and her kingdom, it were bestTo risk no surmise rash. E'en now she's drestSometimes in skins. Give her ground-nuts and grain,Cattle and thatch'd hut, then she'll not... more...

THE TRAVELLING COMPANIONS. No. III. SCENE—On the Coach from Braine l'Alleud to Waterloo. The vehicle has a Belgian driver, but the conductor is a true-born Briton. Mr. CYRUS K. TROTTER and his daughter are behind with PODBURY. CULCHARD, who is not as yet sufficiently on speaking terms with his friend to ask for an introduction, is on the box-seat in front. Mr. Trotter. How are you getting along,... more...

SHORT STORY WRITING   some old belief vitalized by its bearing on our lives to-day, an analysis of an obscure calling, a glimpse at a forgotten quarter ... but one thing it can never be—it can never be 'a novel in a nutshell'." "A short story ... must lead up to something. It should have for its structure a plot, a bit of life, an incident such as you would find in a brief... more...

CHAPTER I. DIRTY WORK AT THE BORDER At the very beginning of the tale there comes a moment of puzzled hesitation. One way of approach is set beside another for choice, and a third contrived for better choice. Still the puzzle persists, all because the one precisely right way might seem—shall we say intense, high keyed, clamorous? Yet if one way is the only right way, why pause? Courage! Slightly... more...

THE GREY ENVELOPE Catherine Brace walked slowly from the mantel-piece to the open window and back again. Within the last hour she had done that many times, always to halt before the mantel and gaze at the oblong, grey envelope that leaned against the clock. Evidently, she regarded it as a powerful agency. An observer would have perceived that she saw tremendous things come out of it—and that she... more...

THE PEDLER OF DUST STICKS. One day I went to visit a friend, a lady, who came from Hamburg, in Germany. I was much pleased with a portrait which was hanging up in her room, and I was particularly struck by the ornamental drawings with which the picture was surrounded. They consisted of whip handles, canes, piano keys, mouth-pieces for wind instruments, all sorts of umbrellas, and many more things, of... more...

The muffled, helmeted figure of a pilot climbed down the spider ladder, nestled into the foremost scout's cockpit and pressed the starting button. The motor spat out a wisp of smoke, then burst into its full-throated roar: the automatic clamp above loosened: the scout dropped plummet-like, bobbed to the flagship below, straightened out and zoomed six thousand feet up into the morning blue, where... more...

GAMES FOR A PARTY Blind Man's Buff "Blind Man's Buff" is one of the best, oldest, and simplest of games. One player is blindfolded, is turned round two or three times to confuse his ideas as to his position in the room, and is then told to catch whom he can. If he catches some one, yet cannot tell who it is, he must go on again as blind man; but if he can tell who it is, that person... more...