We who are born into the world's artificial system can never adequately know how little in our present state and circumstances is natural, and how much is merely the interpolation of the perverted mind and heart of man. Art has become a second and stronger nature; she is a step-mother, whose crafty tenderness has taught us to despise the bountiful and wholesome ministrations of our true parent. It... more...

My friend the late Miss Else C. M. Benecke left a number of Polish stories in rough translation, and I am carrying out her wishes in editing them and handing them over to English readers. In spite of failing health during the last years of her life, she worked hard at translations from this beautiful but difficult language, and the two volumes, Tales by Polish Authors and More Tales by Polish Authors,... more...

A GENTLEMAN OF THE HIGHWAYS By KATHRYN JARBOE Since early morning nothing but sunshine had entered the hospitable doorway of The Jolly Grig, a tavern not a dozen miles from the outer edge of London town. Across the white, sanded floor golden patches of light had moved with measured tread, and merry motes had danced in the golden beams, but nothing else had stirred. On the deep hearth were piled huge... more...

"Over the Plum-Pudding" I have been asked so often and by so many persons known and unknown to me why it was that a Christmas book that was to have been issued some years ago under my editorial supervision never appeared, although announced as ready for immediate publication, that I feel that I should make some statement in explanation of the seeming deception. The matter was very annoying,... more...

A NOBLEMAN'S NEST I The brilliant, spring day was inclining toward the evening, tiny rose-tinted cloudlets hung high in the heavens, and seemed not to be floating past, but retreating into the very depths of the azure. In front of the open window of a handsome house, in one of the outlying streets of O * * * the capital of a Government, sat two women; one fifty years of age, the other seventy... more...

CHAPTER I On a time it happened that the light-house keeper in Aspinwall, not far from Panama, disappeared without a trace. Since he disappeared during a storm, it was supposed that the ill-fated man went to the very edge of the small, rocky island on which the light-house stood, and was swept out by a wave. This supposition seemed the more likely as his boat was not found next day in its rocky niche.... more...

"You ought to buy it," said my host; "it's just the place for a solitary-minded devil like you. And it would be rather worth while to own the most romantic house in Brittany. The present people are dead broke, and it's going for a song—you ought to buy it." It was not with the least idea of living up to the character my friend Lanrivain ascribed to me (as a matter of fact,... more...

Foreword So many inquiries have been made as to exactly where, and what is the "Mother Lode"! The geologist and the historian agree as to its location and composition, but the old miners and "sojourners" of the vanished golden era give strangely different versions of it. Some of these are here set down, if not all for your enlightenment at least, I hope, for your entertainment. That is,... more...

THE MAN ON THE BEACH He lived beside a river that emptied into a great ocean. The narrow strip of land that lay between him and the estuary was covered at high tide by a shining film of water, at low tide with the cast-up offerings of sea and shore. Logs yet green, and saplings washed away from inland banks, battered fragments of wrecks and orange crates of bamboo, broken into tiny rafts yet odorous... more...

Grateful acknowledgment for permission to include the stories and other material in this volume is made to the following authors, editors, publishers, and copyright holders: To The Pictorial Review Company and Miss Edwina Stanton Babcock for permission to reprint "The Excursion," first published in The Pictorial Review; to The Century Company and Mr. Thomas Beer for permission to reprint... more...