Locomotion in the Twentieth Century It is proposed in this book to present in as orderly an arrangement as the necessarily diffused nature of the subject admits, certain speculations about the trend of present forces, speculations which, taken all together, will build up an imperfect and very hypothetical, but sincerely intended forecast of the way things will probably go in this new century.... more...

HART-LEAP WELL Hart-Leap Well is a small spring of water, about five miles from Richmond in Yorkshire, and near the side of the road which leads from Richmond to Askrigg. Its name is derived from a remarkable chase, the memory of which is preserved by the monuments spoken of in the second Part of the following Poem, which monuments do now exist as I have there described them.   The Knight had ridden... more...

CHAPTER I Who could forget the Ochakee River, and the valley through which it flows! The river itself rises in one of those lost and nameless lakes in the Floridan central ridge, then is hidden at once in the live oak and cypress forests that creep inland from the coasts. But it can never be said truly to flow. Over the billiard-table flatness of that land it moves so slowly and silently that it gives... more...

The problem of government publications in the small libraries has been discussed at much length by librarians, but it is still far from a definite solution. In fact, there can be no general settlement of many phases of this question, for each and every library must decide what its own policy and attitude shall be toward this class of publications. It is generally admitted that some libraries ought to... more...

Chapter I. Early one bright June morning, not long ago, a high knoll of a prairie in southern New Mexico was occupied as it had never been before. Rattlesnakes had coiled there; prairie-dog sentinels and wolves and antelopes, and even grim old buffalo bulls, had used that swelling mound for a lookout station. Mountains in the distance and a great sweep of the plains could be seen from it. Never until... more...

THE PROGRESSIVE SOUTH. It is encouraging to note the signs of progress at the South towards meeting the heavy responsibilities of the situation. It is a mistake to imagine that the Southern situation does not improve from year to year. Hundreds of thousands, if not millions, appreciate the trend of events and the necessity for the elevation of the depressed millions with whom they are intermingled. The... more...

I The Bell in the Fog I he great author had realized one of the dreams of his ambitious youth, the possession of an ancestral hall in England. It was not so much the good American's reverence for ancestors that inspired the longing to consort with the ghosts of an ancient line, as artistic appreciation of the mellowness, the dignity, the aristocratic aloofness of walls that have sheltered, and... more...

CHAPTER I   Preamble—Somewhat Immoral Notions of a Boarding-House Keeper—A    Balcony Is Heard Closing—A Cricket Chirps. The clock in the corridor had just struck twelve, in a leisurely, rhythmic, decorous manner. It was the habit of that tall old narrow-cased clock to accelerate or retard, after its own sweet taste and whim, the uniform and monotonous series of hours that encircle our life... more...

INTRODUCTION. Again, on behalf of readers of this National Library, I have to thank a poet of our day—in this case the Oxford Professor of Poetry—for joining his voice to the voices of the past through which our better life is quickened for the duties of to-day.  Not for his own verse only, but for his fine sense also of what is truest in the poets who have gone before, the name of Francis Turner... more...

CHAPTER I. The moon had newly risen, a late October moon, a pale almost imperceptible crescent, above the dark pine spires in the thicket through which Roderick Vawdrey came, gun in hand, after a long day's rabbit-shooting. It was not his nearest way home, but he liked the broad clearing in the pine wood, which had a ghostly look at dusk, and was so still and lonely that the dart of a squirrel... more...