I was born March 15th 1838 at a place now called Williams in Lawrence County, Indiana. When the day came for me to be named, mother said, "He looks like my brother Zachariah," but father said, "He looks like my brother Simpson." "All right", said mother," we will just christen him Zachariah Simpson." And that is my name unto this day. Now, when mother said... more...

PROCLAMATION. Whereas, It has come to my knowledge from the highest official sources, that my Government has been recently threatened with overthrow by lawless violence; and whereas the representatives at my Court, of the United States, Great Britain and France, being cognizant of these threats, have offered me the prompt assistance of the Naval forces of their respective countries, I hereby publicly... more...

TITUS FLAVIUS DOMITIANUS. (479) I. Domitian was born upon the ninth of the calends of November [24th October] [795], when his father was consul elect, (being to enter upon his office the month following,) in the sixth region of the city, at the Pomegranate [796], in the house which he afterwards converted into a temple of the Flavian family. He is said to have spent the time of his youth in so much... more...

CHAPTER I The Jebel es Zubleh is a mountain fifty miles and more in length, and so narrow that its tracery on the map gives it a likeness to a caterpillar crawling from the south to the north. Standing on its red-and-white cliffs, and looking off under the path of the rising sun, one sees only the Desert of Arabia, where the east winds, so hateful to vinegrowers of Jericho, have kept their playgrounds... more...

THE ULTIMATUM AND WHAT LED TO IT When the late Emperor of the French was informed, on the eve of the Franco-German War, that not so much as a gaiter button would be found wanting if hostilities were at once commenced, soon all France found itself, with him, fatally deceived. But when the Transvaal Burghers boasted that they were "ready to give the British such a licking as they had never had... more...

OUR COMPANY. Five hundred miles away to the north and east lies the snug little Island of St. Jean; a beautiful land in summer, with its red cliffs of red sandstone and ruddy clay, surmounted by green fields, which stretch away inland to small areas of the primeval forest, which once extended unbroken from the shores of the Gulf of St. Lawrence to the waters of the Straits of Northumberland. Drear and... more...

ON THE SUFFERINGS OF THE WORLD. Unless suffering is the direct and immediate object of life, our existence must entirely fail of its aim. It is absurd to look upon the enormous amount of pain that abounds everywhere in the world, and originates in needs and necessities inseparable from life itself, as serving no purpose at all and the result of mere chance. Each separate misfortune, as it comes, seems,... more...

CHAPTER I GANGOIL. Just a fortnight before Christmas, 1871, a young man, twenty-four years of age, returned home to his dinner about eight o'clock in the evening. He was married, and with him and his wife lived his wife's sister. At that somewhat late hour he walked in among the two young women, and another much older woman who was preparing the table for dinner. The wife and the wife's... more...

HIS YOUTH Harold was about ten years of age when his father, the Rev. Mr. Excell, took the pastorate of the First Church in Rock River. Many of the people in his first congregation remarked upon "the handsome lad." The clear brown of his face, his big yellow-brown eyes, his slender hands, and the grace of his movements gave him distinction quite aside from that arising from his connection with... more...

A SECOND HOME The Rue du Tourniquet-Saint-Jean, formerly one of the darkest and most tortuous of the streets about the Hotel de Ville, zigzagged round the little gardens of the Paris Prefecture, and ended at the Rue Martroi, exactly at the angle of an old wall now pulled down. Here stood the turnstile to which the street owed its name; it was not removed till 1823, when the Municipality built a... more...