BEACON LIGHTS OF HISTORY HÉLOÏSE. * * * * * A.D. 1101-1164. LOVE. When Adam and Eve were expelled from Paradise, they yet found one flower, wherever they wandered, blooming in perpetual beauty. This flower represents a great certitude, without which few would be happy,—subtile, mysterious, inexplicable,—a great boon recognized alike by poets and moralists, Pagan and Christian; yea, identified not... more...

Mrs. Campbell: "Now this, I think, is the most exciting part of the whole affair, and the pleasantest." She is seated at breakfast in her cottage at Summering-by-the-Sea. A heap of letters of various stylish shapes, colors, and superscriptions lies beside her plate, and irregularly straggles about among the coffee-service. Vis-à-vis with her sits Mr. Campbell behind a newspaper. "How... more...

THE JEW OF MALTA. Enter MACHIAVEL. MACHIAVEL. Albeit the world think Machiavel is dead,Yet was his soul but flown beyond the Alps;And, now the Guise is dead, is come from France,To view this land, and frolic with his friends.To some perhaps my name is odious;But such as love me, guard me from their tongues,And let them know that I am Machiavel,And weigh not men, and therefore not men's... more...

CHAPTER I. THE ANCESTRY, BIRTH, AND CHILDHOOD, OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. The Puritan Pilgrims of the May-Flower landed on Plymouth Rock, and founded the Colony of Massachusetts, on the 21st day of December, 1620. HENRY ADAMS, the founder of the Adams family in America, fled from ecclesiastical oppression in England, and joined the Colony at a very early period, but at what precise time is not recorded. He... more...

ELECTRICITY AND MATTER My Dear Son: You are interested in radio-telephony and want me to explain it to you. I’ll do so in the shortest and easiest way which I can devise. The explanation will be the simplest which I can give and still make it possible for you to build and operate your own set and to understand the operation of the large commercial sets to which you will listen. I’ll write you a... more...

INTRODUCTION The tragedy enacted in China during the closing year of the nineteenth century marks an epoch in the history of China and of the world. Two world-views, two types of civilization met in deadly conflict, and the inherent weakness of isolated, belated, superstitious and corrupt paganism was revealed. Moreover, during this, China's crisis, Japan for the first time stepped out upon the... more...

CHAPTER I THE CROW’S NEST “You never told me how you happened to name her Blythe.” The two old friends, Mr. John DeWitt and Mrs. Halliday, were reclining side by side in their steamer-chairs, lulled into a quiescent mood by the gentle, scarcely perceptible, motion of the vessel. It was an exertion to speak, and Mrs. Halliday replied evasively, “Do you like the name?” “For Blythe,—yes. But... more...

I—DOWN THE RABBIT-HOLE Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank, and of having nothing to do. Once or twice she had peeped into the book her sister was reading, but it had no pictures or conversations in it, "and what is the use of a book," thought Alice, "without pictures or conversations?" So she was considering in her own mind (as well as she... more...

When the author resolved upon a journey to the Antipodes he was in London, just returned from Norway, Sweden, and Russia, and contemplated reaching the far-away countries of Australia and New Zealand by going due east through the Mediterranean, the Suez Canal, the Red Sea, and then crossing the Indian Ocean. But this is not the nearest route to Oceania. The English monthly mail for that part of the... more...

Science needed two thousand years to disentangle the earth's orbital movement from the revolutions of the other planets, and the incomparably more arduous problem of distinguishing the solar share in the confused multitude of stellar displacements first presented itself as possibly tractable a little more than a century ago. In the lack for it as yet of a definite solution there is, then, no... more...