CHAPTER 1 Beside the rear window of the blacksmith shop Jasper Lanning held his withered arms folded against his chest. With the dispassionate eye and the aching heart of an artist he said to himself that his life work was a failure. That life work was the young fellow who swung the sledge at the forge, and truly it was a strange product for this seventy-year-old veteran with his slant Oriental eyes... more...

"Wonder 'f Eph's got back; they say his sentence run out yisterday." The speaker, John Doane, was a sunburnt fisherman, one of a circle of well-salted individuals who sat, some on chairs, some on boxes and barrels, around the stove in a country store. "Yes," said Captain Seth, a middle-aged little man with ear-rings; "he come on the stage to-noon. Would n't hardly... more...

Oh, ye, who so lately were blythesome and gay,At the Butterfly’s Banquet, carousing away;Your feasts and your revels of pleasure are fled,For the soul of the Banquet, the Butterfly’s dead.No longer the Flies and the Emmets advance,To join with their friends in the Grasshopper’s dance;For see, his thin form o’er the favourite bend,And the Grasshopper mourns for the loss of his friend.And hark, to... more...

Major general (Ret.) James J. Bennington had both professional admiration and personal distaste for the way the politicians maneuvered him. The party celebrating his arrival as the new warden of Duncannon Processing Prison had begun to mellow. As in any group of men with a common interest, the conversation and jokes centered on that interest. The representatives and senators of the six states which... more...

THE FOUNTAIN OF HAPPINESS. The source and fullness of created good is the knowledge and enjoyment of God. "Give what thou wilt, without thee we are poor; and with thee rich, take what thou wilt away." The wicked are like a ship's crew at sea, carried by the winds upon unknown waters, without peace or safety until they can renew communications with the shore. A man alienated from his God is... more...

Chapter One. Deep in the interior of the American Continent—more than a thousand miles from the shores of any sea—lies our scene. Climb with me yonder mountain, and let us look from its summit of snow. We have reached its highest ridge. What do we behold? On the north a chaos of mountains, that continues on through thirty parallels to the shores of the Arctic Sea! On the south, the same... more...

'll take beer, son, and thanks again for the offer. As you can see, I'm kinda down on my luck. I know what you're thinking, but I'm not really on the bum. I usually make out all right—nothing fancy, mind you, but it's a living. Odd jobs in the winter and spring, follow the harvests in the summer and fall. Things are slack right now. You? Electronics, huh? Used to know a... more...

Left entirely alone on a quiet afternoon, the unbroken stillness which surrounded me, as well as the soft haze which floats upon the atmosphere, in that most delightful of all seasons, the glorious "Indian Summer" of Eastern Canada, caused my thoughts to wander far away into the dreamy regions of the past, and many scenes long past, and almost forgotten, passed in review before my mind's... more...

May 10, 1792. I am every day more confirmed in the opinion I communicated to you on my arrival, that the first ardour of the revolution is abated.—The bridal days are indeed past, and I think I perceive something like indifference approaching. Perhaps the French themselves are not sensible of this change; but I who have been absent two years, and have made as it were a sudden transition from... more...

THE BLUE FLOWER The parents were abed and sleeping. The clock on the wall ticked loudly and lazily, as if it had time to spare. Outside the rattling windows there was a restless, whispering wind. The room grew light, and dark, and wondrous light again, as the moon played hide-and-seek through the clouds. The boy, wide-awake and quiet in his bed, was thinking of the Stranger and his stories. "It was... more...