What do you hate and fear the most? I know a girl who gags and throws up at the mere sight of a bird. Poor kid, when she was a barefoot moppet she stepped on a fledgling robin in the grass. She hasn't gotten over the squish of it yet. Birds don't trouble me. I can look at them all day. It takes snakes to give me the green shudders. I hate them. She was getting better at them, I decided. This... more...

CHAPTER 1 "How I wish I had lived hundreds of years ago, when the Vikings lived; it must have been prime!" He was a Shetland boy of fifteen who so spoke, and he was addressing his young sister of eleven. They were sitting on a low crag by the shore, dangling their feet over the water, which flowed clear and bright within a short distance of their toes. They were looking out upon a grand stretch... more...

Iceland is a little country far north in the cold sea. Men found it and went there to live more than a thousand years ago. During the warm season they used to fish and make fish-oil and hunt sea-birds and gather feathers and tend their sheep and make hay. But the winters were long and dark and cold. Men and women and children stayed in the house and carded and spun and wove and knit. A whole family sat... more...

CHAPTER I. THE APPARITION. "Be patient a few: minutes longer! There's a man beckoning to go with us," said the boatman to his passengers, two women and one man. The man was gray-haired, of slender form, rubicund face, and blue eyes of a kindly, but absent-minded and weary expression; a heavy moustache, wholly covering the upper lip, seemed out of keeping with this inoffensive face. He wore... more...

FOREWORD THIS narrative offers a gentle but permanent answer to the problem presented to humanity by the German people. It seeks to go beyond the stage of indemnities, diplomatic or trade control, peace by armed preponderance. These agencies do not take into account Teuton nature, character, manner of living, beliefs. Unless the Germans are changed, the world will live at swords' points with them... more...

PREFACE Writing not long ago to my oldest literary friend, I expressed in a moment of heedless sentiment the wish that we might have again one of our talks of long-past days, over the purposes and methods of our art. And my friend, wiser than I, as he has always been, replied with this doubting phrase "Could we recapture the zest of that old time?" I would not like to believe that our faith in... more...

VILLAGE IMPROVEMENTS. It may be because the newness of our country and the fragile character of our early structures have prevented the accumulation of inferior, ugly, and uncomfortable houses, as the nucleus around which later building has crystallized; it may be from circumstances which have prevented the isolated residence of the better classes of our people; or it may be the result of accident.... more...

The Diary of Caroline Cowles Richards fell into my hands, so to speak, out of space. I had no previous acquaintance with the author, and I sat down to read the book one evening in no especial mood of anticipation. From the first page to the last my attention was riveted. To call it fascinating barely expresses the quality of the charm. Caroline Richards and her sister Anna, having early lost their... more...

THE CHINESE VILLAGE There are in India alone over half a million villages. In all Asia, not improbably, there may be four times that number. By far the larger part of the most numerous people on the globe live in villages. The traveller in the Chinese Empire may start from some seaport, as Tientsin, and journey for several months together in the same general direction, before reaching its frontiers on... more...

The Two Cousins. “And what brought you to France, fair cousin?” The question was put by a beautiful girl scarcely yet verging on womanhood to a fine intelligent youth, two or three years her senior, as they paced slowly on together through the gardens of the Louvre on the banks of the Seine, flowing at that period bright and clear amid fields and groves. Before them rose the stately palace lately... more...