CHAPTER I THE SANDS OPPOSITE ENGLAND If you leave the mouth of the Thames, or the white chalk cliffs at Dover, and sail over the water just where the English Channel meets the North Sea, you will in about three or four hours see before you a long expanse of yellow sand, and rising behind it a low ridge of sandhills, which look in the distance like a range of baby mountains. These sandhills are called... more...

VACATION DAYS. "Up with your helm there, Noddy! Luff her up or you'll have the Curlew on the rocks!" "That's right, luff!" cried Billy Raynor, adding his voice to Jack Ready's command. "That's what I luff to do," grinned the red-headed, former Bowery waif, Noddy Nipper, as, with a dexterous motion, he jerked over the tiller of the fine, speedy sloop in which... more...

SENSES. Sight.—Light.—Five minutes after birth, slight sensibility to light (2). Second day, sensitiveness to light of candle (3). Sixth and seventh days, pleasure in moderately bright daylight (3, 4). Ninth and tenth days, sensitiveness greater at waking than soon afterward (3). Sleeping babes close the eyes more tightly when light falls on the eyes (4). Eleventh day, pleasure in light of candle... more...

THE BODY-REPUBLIC AND ITS DEFENSE The human body as a mechanism is far from perfect. It can be beaten or surpassed at almost every point by some product of the machine-shop or some animal. It does almost nothing perfectly or with absolute precision. As Huxley most unexpectedly remarked a score of years ago, "If a manufacturer of optical instruments were to hand us for laboratory use an instrument... more...

e was her brother. The thought gave her the same thrill this morning as it had given her on a morning seventeen years back, when the old family doctor had laid a tiny bundle in her arms and said, "You'll have to be his sister and mother both, Elizabeth." Her twelve years then hung heavily on her; her little face, stained with the marks of recent tears, took on a warmer glow as she touched... more...

CHAPTER I. INVITATION TO TAKE COMMAND OF CHILIAN NAVY—ARRIVAL AT VALPARAISO—FIRST EXPEDITION TO PERU—ATTACK ON SPANISH SHIPPING AT CALLAO—DEPARTURE FOR HUACHO—CAPTURE OF SPANISH CONVOYS OF MONEY—PAITA TAKEN—RETURN TO VALPARAISO TO REORGANIZE THE SQUADRON—OFFER TO GIVE UP MY SHARE OF PRIZEMONEY TO THE REPUBLIC—THIS OFFER DECLINED BY THE SUPREME DIRECTOR—POPULAR... more...

April 5, 1916. A severe blizzard hit London last week, and Mr. Pemberton-Billing has since been heard to admit, however reluctantly, that there are other powers of the air. After more than five weeks the bubble blown by Sir James Dewar at the Royal Institution on February 17th has burst. A still larger bubble, blown by some eminent German scientists as long ago as August, 1914, is said to be on the... more...

A note about this story This story is from my collection, "A Place So Foreign and Eight More," published by Four Walls Eight Windows Press in September, 2003, ISBN 1568582862. I've released this story, along with five others, under the terms of a Creative Commons license that gives you, the reader, a bunch of rights that copyright normally reserves for me, the creator. I recently did the... more...

First Chronicle. JACK O'LANTERNIMiss Miranda Sawyer's old-fashioned garden was the pleasantest spot in Riverboro on a sunny July morning. The rich color of the brick house gleamed and glowed through the shade of the elms and maples. Luxuriant hop-vines clambered up the lightning rods and water spouts, hanging their delicate clusters here and there in graceful profusion. Woodbine transformed... more...

CHAPTER I. Sarah and Angelina Grimké were born in Charleston, South Carolina; Sarah, Nov. 26, 1792; Angelina, Feb. 20, 1805. They were the daughters of the Hon. John Fauchereau Grimké, a colonel in the revolutionary war, and judge of the Supreme Court of South Carolina. His ancestors were German on the father's side, French on the mother's; the Fauchereau family having left France in... more...