CHAPTER I. Whatever claims this story may have upon the notice of the world, they will rest on no niceties of style or aptness of illustration. It is a plain tale, plainly told: nor, as I conceive, does its native horror need any ingenious embellishment. There are many books that I, though a man of no great erudition, can remember, which gain much of interest from the pertinent and appropriate comments... more...

The object of a census is scientific.  A census is a sociological investigation.  And the object of the science of sociology is the happiness of the people.  This science and its methods differ sharply from all other sciences. Its peculiarity lies in this, that sociological investigations are not conducted by learned men in their cabinets, observatories and laboratories, but by two thousand people... more...

INTRODUCTORY NOTES The author in this work endeavours to solve the greatest scientific problem that has puzzled scientists for the past two hundred years. The question has arisen over and over again, since the discovery of universal gravitation by Sir Isaac Newton, as to what is the physical cause of the attraction of gravitation. “Action at a distance” has long ceased to be recognized as a... more...

How far the term, "A Leveller," is provincial, or confined to the Borders, I am not certain; for before I had left them, to become as a pilgrim on the earth, the phrase had fallen into disuse, and the events, or rather the cause which brought it into existence, had passed away. But, twenty-five or even twenty years ago, in these parts, there was no epithet more familiar to the lips of every... more...

CHAPTER I There is no such thing as an immortal monkey, but this monkey was as near it as possible. Talk of a cat's nine lives—this monkey had ninety! A monkey's business in the world is usually to make everybody merry, but the special mission of this one, I fear, was to make everybody as angry as ever they could be. In wrath-producing power, in fact, this monkey positively shone. How many... more...

There are times when I don't know my own strength. Or, at least, the strength of my advice. And the case of Jason Howley was certainly an instance of one of those times. When he came to my office with his gadget, I heard him out, trying to appear both interested and co-operative—which is good business. But I am forced to admit that neither Howley nor his gadget were very impressive. He was a... more...

THE WITCH IT was approaching nightfall. The sexton, Savely Gykin, was lying in his huge bed in the hut adjoining the church. He was not asleep, though it was his habit to go to sleep at the same time as the hens. His coarse red hair peeped from under one end of the greasy patchwork quilt, made up of coloured rags, while his big unwashed feet stuck out from the other. He was listening. His hut adjoined... more...

CHAPTER FIRST AT HOME IN THE LITTLE STONE HUT High up in the Bernese Oberland, quite a distance above the meadow-encircled hamlet of Kandergrund, stands a little lonely hut, under the shadow of an old fir-tree. Not far away rushes down from the wooded heights of rock the Wild brook, which in times of heavy rains, has carried away so many rocks and bowlders that when the storms are ended a ragged mass... more...

Had the author of the following play written it merely for the purpose of winning for it the universal praise which the journals have lavished upon his romances, and which perhaps transcended their merits, The Resources of Quinola would still have been an excellent literary speculation; but, when he sees himself the object of so much praise and so much condemnation, he has come to the conclusion that... more...

CHAPTER I Cherry Strickland came in the door of the Strickland house, and shut it behind her, and stood so, with her hands behind her on the knob, and her slender body leaning forward, and her breath rising and falling on deep, ecstatic breaths. It was May in California, she was just eighteen, and for twenty-one minutes she had been engaged to be married. She hardly knew why, after that last farewell... more...