INTRODUCTION. As I may, without vanity, presume that the name and official description prefixed to this Proem will secure it, from the sedate and reflecting part of mankind, to whom only I would be understood to address myself, such attention as is due to the sedulous instructor of youth, and the careful performer of my Sabbath duties, I will forbear to hold up a candle to the daylight, or to point out... more...

USIC was written in a scrawl impossible to decipher up to the thirteenth century, when Plain Song (Plain Chant) made its appearance in square and diamond-shaped notes. The graduals and introits had not yet been reduced to bars, but the songs of the troubadours appear to have been in bars of three beats with the accent on the feeble note of each bar. However, the theory that this bar of three beats or... more...

It was characteristic of Mr. Philip Quentin that he first lectured his servant on the superiority of mind over matter and then took him cheerfully by the throat and threw him into a far corner of the room. As the servant was not more than half the size of the master, his opposition was merely vocal, but it was nevertheless unmistakable. His early career had increased his vocabulary and his language was... more...

CHAPTER I. The Highlanders of Scotland. A range of mountains forming a lofty and somewhat shattered rampart, commencing in the county of Aberdeen, north of the river Don, and extending in a southwest course across the country, till it terminates beyond Ardmore, in the county of Dumbarton, divides Scotland into two distinct parts. The southern face of these mountains is bold, rocky, dark and... more...

"We're almost there, my boy." The big, gray-haired man who would be Lieutenant Dale Hunter's superior—Strategic Service's Special Agent, George Rockford—opened another can of beer, his fifth. "There will be intrigue already under way when this helicopter sets down with us. Attempted homicide will soon follow. The former will be meat for me. You will be meat for the... more...

Chapter First. Probabilities of an Ordinance for Children. 'Tis aye a solemn thing to meTo look upon a babe that sleeps,Wearing in its spirit-deepsThe unrevealed mysteryOf its Adam's taint and woe.—Miss Barrett. Heaven lies about us in our infancy.—Wordsworth. It is generally believed that, of those who have gone to heaven from this world, by far the larger part have been infants and... more...

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I begin a life without a similitude with a simile—Start off with four horses—And, finally, I make my first appearance on any stage, under the protection of the “Crown.” In the volume I am going to write, it is my intention to adhere rigidly to the truth—this will be bonâ fide an autobiography—and, as the public like novelty, an autobiography without an iota of fiction in the whole of it,... more...

PREFACE. This volume is an historical fiction, but the plan of it was suggested by biography, and is made to include the most interesting and picturesque episodes in the home side of the life of Benjamin Franklin, so as to form a connected narrative or picture of his public life. I have written no book with a deeper sympathy with my subject, for, although fiction, the story very truthfully shows that... more...

CHAPTER I IS THERE MONEY IN THE POULTRY BUSINESS? The chicken business is big. No one knows how big it is and no one can find out. The reason it is hard to find out is because so many people are engaged in it and because the chicken crop is sold, not once a year, but a hundred times a year. Statistics are guesses. True statistics are the sum of little guesses, but often figures published as statistics... more...