CHAPTER I A HERO, BUT NOT HEROIC "Shall I ever be strong in mind or body again?" said Walter Gregory, with irritation, as he entered a crowded Broadway omnibus. The person thus querying so despairingly with himself was a man not far from thirty years of age, but the lines of care were furrowed so deeply on his handsome face, that dismal, lowering morning, the first of October, that he seemed... more...

HE thought he had already, poor John Berridge, tasted in their fulness the sweets of success; but nothing yet had been more charming to him than when the young Lord, as he irresistibly and, for greater certitude, quite correctly figured him, fairly sought out, in Paris, the new literary star that had begun to hang, with a fresh red light, over the vast, even though rather confused, Anglo-Saxon horizon;... more...

TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE CHARLES, LORD CLIFFORD OF LANESBOROUGH, etc. My Lord,—It is with a great deal of pleasure that I lay hold on this first occasion which the accidents of my life have given me of writing to your lordship: for since at the same time I write to all the world, it will be a means of publishing (what I would have everybody know) the respect and duty which I owe and pay to you.  I... more...

CHAPTER I A  creaking complaint of loose and rattling boards rose under the old mountaineer's brogans as he stepped from the threshold to the porch. His eyes, searching the wooded mountain-side, held at first only that penetration which born woodsmen share with the hawk and ferret, but presently they kindled into irascibility as well. He raised his voice in a loud whoop that went skittering off... more...

CHAPTER XXVIII. FREEDOM AT LAST ASSURED. As to the Military situation, a few words are, at this time, necessary: Hood had now marched Northward, with some 50,000 men, toward Nashville, Tenn., while Sherman, leaving Thomas and some 35,000 men behind, to thwart him, had abandoned his base, and was marching Southward from Atlanta, through Georgia, toward the Sea. On the 30th of November, 1864, General... more...

CHAPTER I ADVENTURES AMONG BOOKS'Thou shalt make castels thanne in Spayne.'Chaucer.  t is a sad truth that bargains are met with more frequently in our youth than in our age. The sophist may argue that age begets philosophy, and that philosophy contemns all worldly things; yet certain it is that the book-hunter, one of the most philosophical of beings, remains on the look-out for bargains to... more...

CHAPTER I. Rowland Mallet had made his arrangements to sail for Europe on the first of September, and having in the interval a fortnight to spare, he determined to spend it with his cousin Cecilia, the widow of a nephew of his father. He was urged by the reflection that an affectionate farewell might help to exonerate him from the charge of neglect frequently preferred by this lady. It was not that the... more...

CHAPTER I I came to London on the fifteenth of June, having left it seven years before in company with my father, to go to Paris, two years before he died. It was drawing on to sunset as we rode up through the Southwark fields and, at the top of a little eminence in the ground saw for the first time plainly all the City displayed before us. We came along the Kent road, having caught sight again and... more...

This volume of "Mediæval Tales" is in four parts, containing severally, (1) Turpin's "History of Charles the Great and Orlando," which is an old source of Charlemagne romance; (2) Spanish Ballads, relating chiefly to the romance of Charlemagne, these being taken from the spirited translations of Spanish ballads published in 1823 by John Gibson Lockhart; (3) a selection of stories... more...

I suppose there is no one of us who can honestly deny that he is interested in one way or another in the American short story. Indeed, it is hard to find a man anywhere who does not enjoy telling a good story. But there are some people born with the gift of telling a good story better than others, and of telling it in such a way that a great many people can enjoy its flavor. Most of you are acquainted... more...