INTRODUCTION It is curious to follow anything right back to its inception, and to discover from what extraordinary causes results are due. It is strange, for instance, to find that the luck of the thirteen began right back at the time when Jan, motoring back from Uzhitze down the valley of the Morava, coming fastish round a corner, plumped right up to the axle in a slough of clinging wet sandy mud. The... more...

Amos and Ann had a poem to learn,A poem to learn one day;But alas! they sighed, and alack! they cried,’Twere better to go and play.Ann was sure ’twas a waste of timeTo bother a child with jingling rhyme.Amos said, “What’s the sense in rhythm—Feet and lines?” He had finished with ’em! They peered at the poem with scowly faces,And yawned and stumbled and lost their places.Then—a breeze... more...

CHAPTER I THE HISTORICAL ELEMENTS Section I. The Problem. The unique MS of Beowulf may be, and if possible should be, seen by the student in the British Museum. It is a good specimen of the elegant script of Anglo-Saxon times: "a book got up with some care," as if intended for the library of a nobleman or of a monastery. Yet this MS is removed from the date when the poem was composed and from... more...

HOW TO THROW OFF AN ARTICLE. "Do you really write?" said Sylvia, gazing at me large-eyed with wonder. I admitted as much. "And do they print it just as you write it?" "Well, their hired grammarians make a few trifling alterations to justify their existence." "And do they pay you quite a lot?" "Sixpence a word." "Oo! How wonderful!" "But not for every... more...

ROB'S NAVY. BY W. O. STODDARD. The tide was just out on the Staten Island shore, and the water in the little cove below Mr. Drake's residence was as smooth as a pan of milk with the cream on. Nothing in the shape of a ship ought to have tipped over in such water as that. So Rob Drake had thought, but every time he shoved his new ship away from the flat rock at the head of the cove, over she... more...

THE FRANCO-AMERICAN CORPS It was on a cool, starlit evening, early in September, 1916, that I first met Drew of Massachusetts, and actually began my adventures as a prospective member of the Escadrille Américaine. We had sailed from New York by the same boat, had made our applications for enlistment in the Foreign Legion on the same day, without being aware of each other's existence; and in... more...

CHAPTER I Hayden was back in New York again after several years spent in the uttermost parts of the earth. He had been building railroads in South America, Africa, and China, and had maintained so many lodges in this or that wilderness that he really feared he might be curiously awkward in adapting himself to the conventional requirements of civilization. In his long roundabout journey home he had... more...

THE BROWN HAND Every one knows that Sir Dominick Holden, the famous Indian surgeon, made me his heir, and that his death changed me in an hour from a hard-working and impecunious medical man to a well-to-do landed proprietor. Many know also that there were at least five people between the inheritance and me, and that Sir Dominick's selection appeared to be altogether arbitrary and whimsical. I can... more...

PREFATORY NOTE Certain happenings as recorded in this work will be found to differ materially from the same incidents and episodes as set down in the writings of Mr. Clemens himself. Mark Twain's spirit was built of the very fabric of truth, so far as moral intent was concerned, but in his earlier autobiographical writings—and most of his earlier writings were autobiographical—he made no real... more...

THE ANALECTS BOOK I On Learning—Miscellaneous Sayings:— "To learn," said the Master, "and then to practise opportunely what one has learnt—does not this bring with it a sense of satisfaction? "To have associates in study coming to one from distant parts—does not this also mean pleasure in store? "And are not those who, while not... more...