Jarvis stretched himself as luxuriously as he could in the cramped general quarters of the Ares. "Air you can breathe!" he exulted. "It feels as thick as soup after the thin stuff out there!" He nodded at the Martian landscape stretching flat and desolate in the light of the nearer moon, beyond the glass of the port. The other three stared at him sympathetically—Putz, the engineer,... more...

The conscious water saw its Lord and blushed. Abraham Cowley is now less remembered for his poetry than for his pleasant volume of essays, published after the Restoration; but he was thought in his own time a better poet than Milton. His collection of love songs—the Mistress—is a mass of cold conceits, in the metaphysical manner; but his elegies on Crashaw and Harvey have much dignity and natural... more...

THE RECKONING The scene is a barber shop. At the center is the chair, facing a mirror and washstand at the right. The tiled walls are sprinkled with the usual advertisements. At the rear, a door leads up to the street by a flight of two or three steps. A dock on the left wall indicates three. At the rise of curtain, THE BARBER, a man of fifty, is discovered sharpening a razor, and whistling softly to... more...

PREFACE Two great collections of Byron's letters have been already printed. In Moore's 'Life', which appeared in 1830, 561 were given. These, in FitzGreene Halleck's American edition of Byron's 'Works', published in 1847, were increased to 635. The first volume of a third collection, edited by Mr. W. E. Henley, appeared early in 1897. A comparison of the number... more...

A is for Adams So A is for Adams, Oh! fortunate ALuck certainly seems to be coming your way. In the Days of my Infancy, A I recallStood for Ant or for Apple or anything small. Now A stands for Adams, Maude Adams, Hurray!I always said A would be Famous some day. B stands for the Boys B’s for the Boys, all as Busy as BeesThey are building a Little House under the TreesWith funny red walls and mossy... more...

INTRODUCTORY NOTE ROBERT BROWNING stands, in respect to his origin and his career, in marked contrast to the two aristocratic poets beside whose dramas his "Blot in the 'Scutcheon" is here printed. His father was a bank clerk and a dissenter at a time when dissent meant exclusion from Society; the poet went neither to one of the great public schools nor to Oxford or Cambridge; and no... more...

"When we two partedIn silence and tears,Half broken-heartedTo sever for years." MUST I really go?" "I'm afraid it has come to that, Philippa! I believe I have kept you here too long already. You're ten years old now, growing a tall girl, and not learning half the things you ought to. I feel there's something wrong about you, but I don't know quite how to set it... more...

CHAPTER I   LISA'S KNIGHT AND LISA'S SISTER It had come at last, the moment I had been thinking about for days. I was going to have him all to myself, the only person in the world I ever loved. He had asked me to sit out two dances, and that made me think he really must want to be with me, not just because I'm the "pretty girl's sister," but because I'm myself, Lisa... more...

PREFACE A preface to a play seems generally to be considered as a kind of closet-prologue, in which—if his piece has been successful—the author solicits that indulgence from the reader which he had before experienced from the audience: but as the scope and immediate object of a play is to please a mixed assembly in representation (whose judgment in the theatre at least is decisive,) its degree of... more...

CHAPTER I Introductory How old is the problem of the Nervous Housewife? Did the semi-mythical Cave Man (who is perhaps only a pseudo-scientific creation) on his return from a prehistoric hunt find his leafy spouse all in tears over her staglocythic house-cleaning, or the conduct of the youngest cave child? Did she complain of her back, did she have a headache every time they disagreed, did she fuss and... more...