CERVANTES. A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. The most trivial act of the daily life of some men has a unique interest, independent of idle curiosity, which dissatisfies us with the meagre food of date, place, and pedigree. So in the "Cartas de Indias" was published, two years ago, in Spain, a facsimile letter from Cervantes when tax-gatherer to Philip II., informing him of the efforts he had made to... more...

SIR, Your acquaintance with the Author before his death was not long, which I have oft heard you say, you counted your great unhappinesse, but within a short time after, you knew not well whether to count your selfe more happie in that you once knew him, or unhappy in that upon your acquaintance you so suddenly lost him. This his worke then being to come forth to the censorious eye of the world, and as... more...

CHAPTER I A HERO, BUT NOT HEROIC "Shall I ever be strong in mind or body again?" said Walter Gregory, with irritation, as he entered a crowded Broadway omnibus. The person thus querying so despairingly with himself was a man not far from thirty years of age, but the lines of care were furrowed so deeply on his handsome face, that dismal, lowering morning, the first of October, that he seemed... more...

Gentlemen:— There is no need, I apprehend, that I should undertake to impress you with a sense either of the need or of the importance of our assemblage here to-day. The fact of your coming here is, of itself, the clearest evidence of your warm acquiescence in the summons to this meeting, and of your cordial interest in the objects which it purposes to consider. Nothing has surprised and gratified me... more...

CHAPTER I THE EAVESDROPPER Maria Angelina was eavesdropping. Not upon her sister Lucia and Paolo Tosti whom she had been assigned to chaperon by reading a book to herself in the adjoining room—no, they were safely busy with piano and violin, and she was heartily bored, anyway, with their inanities. Voices from another direction had pricked her to alertness. Maria Angelina was in the corner room of... more...

PREFACE. The character of the opposition which some of these papers have met with suggests the inference that they contain really important, but unwelcome truths. Negatives multiplied into each other change their sign and become positives. Hostile criticisms meeting together are often equivalent to praise, and the square of fault-finding turns out to be the same thing as eulogy. But a writer has rarely... more...

CHAPTER I I came to London on the fifteenth of June, having left it seven years before in company with my father, to go to Paris, two years before he died. It was drawing on to sunset as we rode up through the Southwark fields and, at the top of a little eminence in the ground saw for the first time plainly all the City displayed before us. We came along the Kent road, having caught sight again and... more...

ACT I The scene is the managing clerk's room, at the offices of Jamesand Walter How, on a July morning. The room is old fashioned,furnished with well-worn mahogany and leather, and lined withtin boxes and estate plans. It has three doors. Two of themare close together in the centre of a wall. One of these twodoors leads to the outer office, which is only divided from themanaging clerk's room... more...

INTRODUCTION. Considerable parts of this book have been written for the unlearned. For the scholarly reader such parts, of course, would be wholly superfluous; yet it is hoped that they to whom these are familiar will be patient in passing through them for the sake of others to whom they may be instructive. Other parts, again, it is believed, will be found new to the most of even educated minds. But... more...

THE SHADOW There surely may come a time for each of us, if we have lived with any animation or interest, if we have had any constant or even fitful desire to penetrate and grasp the significance of the strange adventure of life, a time, I say, when we may look back a little, not sentimentally or with any hope of making out an impressive case for ourselves, and interrogate the memory as to what have... more...