CHINA AND THE CHINESE THE CHINESE LANGUAGE If the Chinese people were to file one by one past a given point, the interesting procession would never come to an end. Before the last man of those living to-day had gone by, another and a new generation would have grown up, and so on for ever and ever. The importance, as a factor in the sum of human affairs, of this vast nation,—of its language, of its... more...

Chapter I: "OUT IN ARIZONA, WHERE THE BAD MEN ARE" "So you think you'd like to work in the Park Office at Grand Canyon?" "Sure!" "Where is Grand Canyon?" I asked as an afterthought. I knew just that little about the most spectacular chasm in the world, when I applied for an appointment there as a Government worker. Our train pulled into the rustic station in the wee... more...

SCENE: Judge Dunfumy's Court. PERSONS: Judge Dunfumy, Officer Simpson and another, Jemima               Flapcakes, Cliff Mullins, John Barnes, two lawyers,               a clerk, a pretty girl and her escort. SETTING: Usual court-room arrangement, except that there is a               large red arrow pointing off-stage left,... more...

I.  It was when coming back to the mines, after a trip to Monterey, that the Girl first met him. It happened, too, just at a time when her mind was ripe to receive a lasting impression. But of all this the boys of Cloudy Mountain Camp heard not a word, needless to say, until long afterwards. Lolling back on the rear seat of the stage, her eyes half closed,—the sole passenger now, and with the seat... more...

CHAPTER I. A DOUBLE ENIGMA. "I'm afraid that he won't come," said Laura McIntyre, in a disconsolate voice. "Why not?" "Oh, look at the weather; it is something too awful." As she spoke a whirl of snow beat with a muffled patter against the cosy red-curtained window, while a long blast of wind shrieked and whistled through the branches of the great white-limbed elms... more...

Twenty-five years ago Cyril Bezdek and E. Carter Dorwin would have met in a private railway car belonging to one of them. They might even have met in a private train. At any rate they would have met in absolute privacy. But it being the present, they had to be content with a series of adjoining rooms taking up less than one half of a car on the Super-Sachem, fastest coast-to-coast train in the country.... more...

I Less than a hundred miles from the city of Gotham, across broad green fields, dotted into squares and oblong valleys by full-leafed maple, and elm, and mulberry, was the village of Brookfield. A hundred years of expansion in the surrounding land had acted inversely with the little hamlet, and had pinched it into a hermitical isolation. The Brookfieldians had discovered a huge beetle in the amber of... more...

WHY AND HOW I CAME TO CALIFORNIA. Some months previous to the Mexican War, my brother David Dudley Field, of New York City, wrote two articles for the Democratic Review upon the subject of the Northwestern Boundary between the territory of the United States and the British Possessions. One of these appeared in the June, and the other in the November number of the Review for 1845.[1] While writing these... more...

CHAPTER I. LIFE ON A COTTON PLANTATION. * * * * * BIRTH—SOLD IN A RICHMOND SLAVE PEN. I was born in Virginia, in 1832, near Charlottesville, in the beautiful valley of the Rivanna river. My father was a white man and my mother a negress, the slave of one John Martin. I was a mere child, probably not more than six years of age, as I remember, when my mother, two brothers and myself were... more...

CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION. DESCRIPTION OF THE CHESS-BOARD AND MEN—ARRANGEMENT OF THE MEN—THE KING—THE QUEEN—THE ROOKS OR CASTLES—THE BISHOPS—THE KNIGHTS—AND THE PAWNS—THEIR MOVEMENTS, POWERS, METHOD OF CAPTURING AN ADVERSE MAN, ETC. DESCRIPTION OF THE CHESS-BOARD AND MEN. The game of Chess is played by two persons, each having at command a little army of sixteen men, upon a board divided... more...