INTRODUCTION The first two or three of these "plays" (I retain the word for lack of a better one) began themselves as short stories, but in each case I found that the dramatic element, speech, tended to absorb the impersonal element of comment and description, so that it proved easier to go on by allowing the characters to establish the situation themselves. As I grew conscious of this... more...

Chapter One. “Mind what you’re doing! Come down directly, you young dog! Ah, I thought as much. There, doctor: a job for you.” It was on board the great steamer Chusan, outward bound from the port of London for Rockhampton, Moreton Bay, and Sydney, by the north route, with a heavy cargo of assorted goods such as are wanted in the far south Colonies, and some fifty passengers, for the most part... more...

CHAPTER I. ALPHA. Richmond in 1861-62. Who that witnessed and shared the wild excitement which, upon the days immediately following the victory at Manassas, throbbed and pulsated throughout the crowded capital of the Southern Confederacy can ever forget? Men were beside themselves with joy and pride,—drunk with glory. By night the city blazed with illuminations, even the most humble home setting up... more...

here was no use hiding from the truth. Somebody had blundered—a fatal blunder—and they were going to pay for it! Mark Forepaugh kicked the pile of hydrogen cylinders. Only a moment ago he had broken the seals—the mendacious seals that certified to the world that the flasks were fully charged. And the flasks were empty! The supply of this precious power gas, which in an emergency should have been... more...

CHAPTER I THE MAN BY THE ROADSIDE A solemn twilight, heavy and oppressive, was closing a dull, slumberous day. It was late in the year for such weather. Not a breath stirred in the trees by the roadside, not a movement in hedge or ditch; some plague might have swept across the land, leaving it stricken and desolate, even the cottages here and there showed no lights and appeared to be deserted. The road... more...

HONORING PARENTS. I suppose all my young readers have learned the fifth commandment, and have often been told that children should honor their parents by cheerful and prompt obedience to all their commands. This is one way in which parents should be honored continually. But there is another way by which you may not only show that you feel respect for your father and mother yourself, but you may force... more...

CHAPTER I The little Med Ship came out of overdrive and the stars were strange and the Milky Way seemed unfamiliar. Which, of course, was because the Milky Way and the local Cepheid marker-stars were seen from an unaccustomed angle and a not-yet-commonplace pattern of varying magnitudes. But Calhoun grunted in satisfaction. There was a banded sun off to port, which was good. A breakout at no more than... more...

Once upon a time—but whether in the time past or time to come is a matter of little or no moment—this wide world had become so overburdened with an accumulation of worn-out trumpery, that the inhabitants determined to rid themselves of it by a general bonfire. The site fixed upon at the representation of the insurance companies, and as being as central a spot as any other on the globe, was... more...

HIS BIRTH On an evening in 1866 (exactly eight hundred years after the Battle of Hastings) Mr. Henry Knight, a draper's manager, aged forty, dark, clean-shaven, short, but not stout, sat in his sitting-room on the second-floor over the shop which he managed in Oxford Street, London. He was proud of that sitting-room, which represented the achievement of an ideal, and he had a right to be proud of... more...

THE DRAMATIC ELEMENT IN THE BIBLE. We say dramatic element in the Bible, not dramatic element of the Bible, since that of which we speak is not essential, but incidental; it is an aspect of the form of the book, not an attribute of its inspiration. By the use of the term dramatic in this connection, let us, in the outset, be understood to have no reference whatever to the theatre and stage-effect, or... more...