THE PRESENT AGE: ITS BEGINNING, PROGRESS AND END Ecclesiastes i:9 The Book of Ecclesiastes is the Book in which the natural man speaks. The conclusion which the wisest man reached is that all is vanity, and there is nothing new under the sun. In this first chapter we read of generations which come and go. The sun rises and goes down; the wind goeth toward the south, and turneth about to the north... more...

CHAPTER INONNEZOSHEJohn Wetherill, one of the famous Wetherill brothers and trader at Kayenta, Arizona, is the man who discovered Nonnezoshe, which is probably the most beautiful and wonderful natural phenomenon in the world. Wetherill owes the credit to his wife, who, through her influence with the Indians finally after years succeeded in getting the secret of the great bridge. After three trips to... more...

OUTSIDE THE GLASS DOORS I like discipline. I like to be part of an institution. It gives one more liberty than is possible among three or four observant friends.   It is always cool and wonderful after the monotone of the dim hospital, its half-lit corridors stretching as far as one can see, to come out into the dazzling starlight and climb the hill, up into the trees and shrubberies here. The wind... more...

CHAPTER IUNDERGROUND TERRORS "Ay, lad," said the old miner, the pale flame of his cap-lamp lighting up his wrinkled face and throwing a distorted shadow on the wall of coal behind, "there's goin' to be a plenty of us killed soon." "Likely enough, if they're all as careless as you," Clem retorted. "Carelessness ain't got nothin' to do with it,"... more...

CHAPTER I HOW I FOUND THE MODEL I cannot pretend that my ambition to paint the Man of Sorrows had any religious inspiration, though I fear my dear old dad at the Parsonage at first took it as a sign of awakening grace. And yet, as an artist, I have always been loath to draw a line between the spiritual and the beautiful; for I have ever held that the beautiful has in it the same infinite element as... more...

CHAP. I. Among the various events recorded in the history of past ages, there are few more interesting and important than the discovery of the western world. By it a large field for adventures, and a new source of power, opulence and grandeur, opened to European nations. To obtain a share of the vast territories in the west became an object of ambition to many of them; but for this purpose, the... more...

CHAPTER I ONLY A MISSIONARY High upon a rock, poised like a bird for flight, stark naked, his satin skin shining like gold and silver in the rising sun, stood a youth, tall, slim of body, not fully developed but with muscles promising, in their faultless, gently swelling outline, strength and suppleness to an unusual degree. Gazing down into the pool formed by an eddy of the river twenty feet below... more...

Chapter XXXIX: Gothic Kingdom Of Italy.—Part I. Zeno And Anastasius, Emperors Of The East.—Birth,Education, And First Exploits Of Theodoric The Ostrogoth.—His Invasion And Conquest Of Italy.—The Gothic Kingdom OfItaly.—State Of The West.—Military And Civil Government.—The Senator Boethius.—Last Acts And Death Of Theodoric. After the fall of the Roman empire in the West, an interval of... more...

Captain Baird stood at the window of the laboratory where the thousand parts of the strange rocket lay strewn in careful order. Small groups worked slowly over the dismantled parts. The captain wanted to ask but something stopped him. Behind him Doctor Johannsen sat at his desk, his gnarled old hand tight about a whiskey bottle, the bottle the doctor always had in his desk but never brought out except... more...

Preface The kindly reception accorded to the first volume of the Historical Nights Entertainment, issued in December of 1917, has encouraged me to prepare the second series here assembled. As in the case of the narratives that made up the first volume, I set out again with the same ambitious aim of adhering scrupulously in every instance to actual, recorded facts; and once again I find it desirable at... more...