Chapter I. During the winter preceding the firing upon Sumter, I was one of a group of young fellows of about my own age who regularly assembled evenings at the corner grocery of the village where we lived, to listen to older persons discuss the affairs of the nation and all other matters, moral, intellectual and social, as is the nightly custom in country groceries, and particularly the probabilities... more...

WARWICK AND COVENTRY. OBLIQUE GABLES IN WARWICK.The history of England is written in living characters in the provincial towns of the kingdom; and it is this which gives such interest to places which have been surpassed commercially by great manufacturing centres and overshadowed socially by the attractions of London. The local nobility once held state little less than royal in houses whose beautiful... more...

Act I. Scene I.—Salem Village. Living-room in Giles Corey's house. Olive Corey is spinning. Nancy Fox, the old servant, sits in the fireplace paring apples. Little Phœbe Morse, on a stool beside her, is knitting a stocking. Phœbe (starting). What is that? Oh, Olive, what is that? Nancy. Yes, what is that? Massy, what a clatter! Olive (spinning). I heard naught. Be not so foolish, child. And... more...

CHAPTER I TWO LETTERS The Leveretts were at their breakfast in the large sunny room in Derby Street. It had an outlook on the garden, and beyond the garden was a lane, well used and to be a street itself in the future. Then, at quite a distance, a strip of woods on a rise of ground, that still further enhanced the prospect. The sun slanted in at the windows on one side, there was nothing to shut it... more...

A CHRISTMAS GREETING "Good Will Toward Men"—St. Luke 11-14. There was a time when the spirit of Christmas was of the present. There is a period when most of it is of the past. There shall come a day perhaps when all of it will be of the future. The child time, the present; the middle years, the past; old age, the future. Come to my mind Christmas Days of long ago. As a boy again I enter into... more...

CHAPTER I.A MUTE GOES ABOARD A BOAT ON THE MISSISSIPPI. At sunrise on a first of April, there appeared, suddenly as Manco Capac at the lake Titicaca, a man in cream-colors, at the water-side in the city of St. Louis. His cheek was fair, his chin downy, his hair flaxen, his hat a white fur one, with a long fleecy nap. He had neither trunk, valise, carpet-bag, nor parcel. No porter followed him. He was... more...

Copyright, 1898, by William Henry Harrison Murray It was at the battle of Malvern Hill—a battle where the carnage was more frightful, as it seems to me, than in any this side of the Alleghanies during the whole war—that my story must begin. I was then serving as Major in the —th Massachusetts Regiment—the old —th, as we used to call it—and a bloody time the boys had of it too. About 2 p. m.... more...

Introduction There are cook books and cook books, and their generation is not ended; a generation that began in the Garden of Eden, presumably, for if Mother Eve was not vastly different from her daughters she knew how to cook some things better than her neighbors, and they wanted to know how she made them and she wanted to tell them. Indeed, it has been stated that the very first book printed, a small... more...

JEMMY STUBBINS, OR THE NAILER BOY. Before I left America in 1846, in order to gratify the wish that had long occupied my heart, of visiting the motherland, I formed for myself a plan of procedure to which I hoped to be able rigidly to adhere. I determined that my visit to England should bring me face to face with the people; that I should converse with the artizan in his workshop, and lifting the lowly... more...

ACT I [Roadside with big stones, etc., on the right; low loose wall at back with gap near centre; at left, ruined doorway of church with bushes beside it. Martin Doul and Mary Doul grope in on left and pass over to stones on right, where they sit.] MARY DOUL. What place are we now, Martin Doul? MARTIN DOUL. Passing the gap. MARY DOUL — [raising her head.] — The length of that! Well, the sun's... more...