CHAPTER I. AMERICA IN THE OLD DAYS. 1. The Story of our Country.—We are sure that every intelligent and patriotic American youth must like to read the story of our country's life. To a boy or girl of good sense no work of fiction can surpass it in interest or power. How delightful to let the imagination summon up the forms and the deeds of the fearless Norse sailors who dared to cross the... more...

PREFACE. This little treatise was written for the purpose of supplying a want felt by the author while giving instruction upon the subject. It was intended for an aid to the young Engineer, and is not to be considered as a complete substitute for the more elaborate works on the subject. The first portion of this work mentions the various strains to which beams are subjected, and gives the formulæ used... more...

A KNIGHT OF THE LEGION OF HONOR It was in the smoking-room of a Cunarder two days out. The evening had been spent in telling stories, the fresh-air passengers crowding the doorways to listen, the habitual loungers and card-players abandoning their books and games. When my turn came,—mine was a story of Venice, a story of the old palace of the Barbarozzi,—I noticed in one corner of the room a man... more...

THE FIRE If I were 'seeing over' a house, and found in every room an iron cage let into the wall, and were told by the caretaker that these cages were for me to keep lions in, I think I should open my eyes rather wide. Yet nothing seems to me more natural than a fire in the grate. Doubtless, when I began to walk, one of my first excursions was to the fender, that I might gaze more nearly at... more...

“Can you use a Sword?” “Yes! What is it?” “Hist, boy! Jump up and dress.” “Oh, it’s you, father!” said the newly aroused sleeper, slipping out of bed—or, rather, off his bed, for the heat of an Eastern China night had made him dispense with bedclothes. He made a frantic dash at his trousers, feeling confused and strange in the darkness, and hardly... more...

now him? Yes, I know him—knew him. That was twenty years ago. Everybody knows him now. Everybody who passed him on the street knows him. Everybody who went to the same schools, or even to different schools in different towns, knows him now. Ask them. But I knew him. I lived three feet away from him for a month and a half. I shipped with him and called him by his first name. What was he like? What was... more...

THE BRAHMIN BULL, IN THE ZOOLOGICAL GARDENS, REGENT'S PARK. The Zoological Society possess several Zebus, or Indian oxen. These were formerly considered a distinct species, but zoologists are now of opinion that the Zebu is merely a variety of the common ox, "although," as Mr. Bennett observes, "it is difficult to ascertain the causes by which the distinctive characters of the two... more...

April 1st. Up and to my office, where busy till noon, and then to the 'Change, where I found all the merchants concerned with the presenting their complaints to the Committee of Parliament appointed to receive them this afternoon against the Dutch. So home to dinner, and thence by coach, setting my wife down at the New Exchange, I to White Hall; and coming too soon for the Tangier Committee walked... more...

THE FRANKFORT AND OFFENBACH ELECTRIC RAILWAY. The electric railway recently set in operation between Frankfort and Offenbach furnishes an occasion for studying the question of such roads anew and from a practical standpoint. For elevated railways Messrs. Siemens and Halske a long time ago chose rails as current conductors. The electric railway from Berlin to Lichterfelde and the one at Vienna are in... more...

NOTES. AUTHORSHIP OF HENRY VIII. In my last communication on the subject of Henry VIII., I referred to certain characteristic tricks of Fletcher's style of frequent occurrence in that play, and I now beg leave to furnish you with a few instances. I wish it, however, to be understood, that I advance these merely as illustrative specimens selected at random; as there is scarcely a line of the... more...