LAYAMON'S BRUT At Totnes Constantin the fair and all his host came ashore; thither came the bold man—well was he brave!—and with him two thousand knights such as no king possessed. Forth they gan march into London, and sent after knights over all the kingdom, and every brave man, that speedily he should come anon. The Britons heard that, where they dwelt in the pits; in earth and in stocks... more...

CHAPTER I THE LAST SEA LINK WITH FRANCE 1720-1744 The fortress of Louisbourg arose not from victory but from defeat; not from military strength but from naval weakness; not from a new, adventurous spirit of attack, but from a half-despairing hope of keeping one last foothold by the sea. It was not begun till after the fortunes of Louis XIV had reached their lowest ebb at the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713.... more...

I. THE TWO SPRINGS High above Sierra's peaks stands grim Mount Tallac. Ten thousand feet above the sea it rears its head to gaze out north to that vast and wonderful turquoise that men call Lake Tahoe, and northwest, across a piney sea, to its great white sister, Shasta of the Snows; wonderful colors and things on every side, mast-like pine trees strung with jewelry, streams that a Buddhist would... more...

CHAPTER I The first Penhallow crossed the Alleghanies long before the War for Independence and on the frontier of civilisation took up land where the axe was needed for the forest and the rifle for the Indian. He made a clearing and lived a hard life of peril, wearily waiting for the charred stumps to rot away. The younger men of the name in Colonial days and later left the place early, and for the... more...

CHAPTER ONE I wasn't really a Westerner an' that's why I'm so different from most of 'em. Take your regular bonie fide Westerner an' when he dies he don't turn to dust, he turns to alkali; but when it comes my turn to settle, I'll jest natchely become the good rich soil o' the Indiana cornbelt. I was born in Indiana and I never left it till after I was ten... more...

THE RUINS OF THE ABBEY OF ST. JOHN THE BAPTIST. The sun is fast sinking. In the depths of an immense piny wood, in the midst of profound solitude, rise the ruins of an abbey, once sacred to St. John the Baptist. Ivy, moss, and creeping plants, almost entirely conceal the stones, now black with age. Some broken arches, some walls pierced with ovals, still remain standing, visible on the dark background... more...

LETTER I. CONTENTMENT. It is, perhaps, only the young who can be very hopefully addressed on the present subject. A few years hence, and your habits of mind will be unalterably formed; a few years hence, and your struggle against a discontented spirit, even should you be given grace to attempt it, would be a perpetually wearisome and discouraging one. The penalty of past sin will pursue you until the... more...

I. A DISCUSSION SOMEWHAT IN THE AIR The flying ship of Professor Lucifer sang through the skies like a silver arrow; the bleak white steel of it, gleaming in the bleak blue emptiness of the evening. That it was far above the earth was no expression for it; to the two men in it, it seemed to be far above the stars. The professor had himself invented the flying machine, and had also invented nearly... more...

CHAPTER I. One evening long ago, when this wonderful century, now in a vigorous old age, had just passed its nineteenth birthday, in a bright, cheerful sitting-room in the good old city of Hartford, Conn., sat a fair young matron beside a cradle in which lay sleeping a beautiful boy a year and a half old. The gentle motion of her little slippered foot on the rocker, keeping time with the soft humming... more...

I.  THE GREAT IDEA The scene was a dusky shabby little room in Ryder Street.  To such caves many repair whose days are passed, and whose food is consumed, in the clubs of the adjacent thoroughfare of cooperative palaces, Pall Mall.  The furniture was battered and dingy; the sofa on which Logan sprawled had a certain historic interest: it was covered with cloth of horsehair, now seldom found by the... more...