LITTLE JANE AND THE POOR MAN. This is little Jane Anderson and her sister. They have been out this morning to take a walk. As they were coming home they saw a poor man lying upon the ground. He was lame, and unable to walk. Jane and her sister felt very sorry for him, and when they were about leaving they gave him a few pennies which they had in their bags.—This was very kind in the little girls. We... more...

“I’ll have to do it.” Claire Gifford stood in the salon of the Brussels pension which had been her home for the last three years, and bent her brows in consideration of an all-absorbing problem. “Can I marry him?” she asked herself once and again, with the baffling result that every single time her brain answered instantly, “You must!” the while her heart rose up in rebellion, and cried,... more...

[5] Last year had well advanced towards its middle—in fact it was already April, 1888—before Mr. Froude's book of travels in the West Indies became known and generally accessible to readers in those Colonies. My perusal of it in Grenada about the period above mentioned disclosed, thinly draped with rhetorical flowers, the dark outlines of a scheme to thwart political aspiration in the... more...

THE READER IS INTRODUCED TO THEM In the House of Many Windows which stands in a large city and is sometimes called a "flat" by people who, because they are grown up, do not know any better, live the Little Lady and the Story Teller. The Little Lady is four years old, going on five, and is fond of stories. This makes her and the Story Teller good friends. They mostly sit in the firelight after... more...

Chapter I: The New World FROM a world of daisies as big as moons and of mountainous green hillocks Michael Fane came by some unrealized method of transport to the thin red house, that as yet for his mind could not claim an individual existence amid the uniformity of a long line of fellows. His arrival coincided with a confusion of furniture, with the tramp of men backwards and forwards from a cavernous... more...

CHAPTER I Strip by strip there opened out before me, as I climbed the "Thousand Stairs" to the red-roofed Administration Building, the broad panorama of Panama and her bay; below, the city of closely packed roofs and three-topped plazas compressed in a scallop of the sun-gleaming Pacific, with its peaked and wooded islands to far Taboga tilting motionless away to the curve of the earth; behind,... more...

A LITTLE JOURNEY TO PUERTO RICO Do you know what people mean when they speak of "Our New Possessions"? What are they? Where are they? Why are men, in the streets, in the shops, everywhere, talking about them? Why are the newspapers full of articles in regard to them? Why are our lawmakers at the capital devoting so much time and attention to them? Can you tell? Some of these things you can... more...

CHAPTER I There was a long, brisk, decisive ring at the door. He continued working. After an interval the bell rang again, briefly, as though the light touch on the electric button had lost its assurance. "Somebody's confidence has departed," he thought to himself, busy with a lead-weighted string and a stick of soft charcoal wrapped in silver foil. For a few moments he continued working,... more...

THE "TROOPS" "It was hard luck," said Searles, "that I should spend a year writing a play for a woman only to find that she had vanished—jumped off the earth into nowhere. This was my highest flight, Singleton, the best writing I ever did, and after the vast pains I took with the thing, the only woman I ever saw who could possibly act it is unavailable; worse than that, absolutely... more...

CHAPTER I. HOW COME THEY THERE? The room was handsomely furnished, but such as I would quarrel with none for calling common, for it certainly was uninteresting. Not a thing in it had to do with genuine individual choice, but merely with the fashion and custom of the class to which its occupiers belonged. It was a dining-room, of good size, appointed with all the things a dining-room "ought" to... more...