TO CHILDREN. The Author of this book is also the Editor of the Blue, Red, Greenland Yellow Fairy Books. He has always felt rather an impostor, because so many children seem to think that he made up these books out of his own head. Now he only picked up a great many old fairy tales, told in French, German, Greek, Chinese, Red Indian, Russian, and other languages, and had them translated and printed,... more...

I EUROPE WITHOUT PEACE Is there anyone who still remembers Europe in the first months of 1914 or calls to mind the period which preceded the first year of the War? It all seems terribly remote, something like a prehistoric era, not only because the conditions of life have changed, but because our viewpoint on life has swerved to a different angle. Something like thirty million dead have dug a chasm... more...

LETTER I MR. LOVELACE, TO JOHN BELFORD, ESQ. SAT. MIDNIGHT. No rest, says a text that I once heard preached upon, to the wicked—and I cannot close my eyes (yet only wanted to compound for half an hour in an elbow-chair)—so must scribble on. I parted with the Captain after another strong debate with him in relation to what is to be the fate of this lady. As the fellow has an excellent head, and... more...

A FOREWORD BY MEG. In the good old times, when "Little Women" worked and played together, the big garret was the scene of many dramatic revels. After a long day of teaching, sewing, and "helping mother," the greatest delight of the girls was to transform themselves into queens, knights, and cavaliers of high degree, and ascend into a world of fancy and romance. Cinderella's... more...

There are times when a broken tool is better than a sound one, or a twisted personality more useful than a whole one. For instance, a whole beer bottle isn't half the weapon that half a beer bottle is ...Illustrated by Martinez   n his office apartment, on the top floor of the Terran Embassy Building in Occeq City, Bertrand Malloy leafed casually through the dossiers of the four new men who had... more...

A wide plain, where the broadening Floss hurries on between its green banks to the sea, and the loving tide, rushing to meet it, checks its passage with an impetuous embrace. On this mighty tide the black ships–laden with the fresh-scented fir-planks, with rounded sacks of oil-bearing seed, or with the dark glitter of coal–are borne along to the town of St. Ogg's, which shows its aged,... more...

I An Irate Neighbor A tall, slim girl, "half-past sixteen," with serious gray eyes and hair which her friends called auburn, had sat down on the broad red sandstone doorstep of a Prince Edward Island farmhouse one ripe afternoon in August, firmly resolved to construe so many lines of Virgil. But an August afternoon, with blue hazes scarfing the harvest slopes, little winds whispering elfishly... 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...

CHARLES F. HORNE Our modern civilization is built up on three great corner-stones, three inestimably valuable heritages from the past. The Græco-Roman civilization gave us our arts and our philosophies, the bases of intellectual power. The Hebrews bequeathed to us the religious idea, which has saved man from despair, has been the potent stimulus to two thousand years of endurance and hope. The Teutons... more...

Men who compare themselves with their nearest neighbours are almost invariably conceited, speak boastingly of themselves, and disrespectfully of others. But if a man extend his survey, if he mingle largely with people whose feelings and opinions have been modified by quite different circumstances, the result is generally beneficial. The very act of accommodating his mind to foreign modes of thought... more...