CHAPTER I. The moon had newly risen, a late October moon, a pale almost imperceptible crescent, above the dark pine spires in the thicket through which Roderick Vawdrey came, gun in hand, after a long day's rabbit-shooting. It was not his nearest way home, but he liked the broad clearing in the pine wood, which had a ghostly look at dusk, and was so still and lonely that the dart of a squirrel... more...

A SECOND HOME The Rue du Tourniquet-Saint-Jean, formerly one of the darkest and most tortuous of the streets about the Hotel de Ville, zigzagged round the little gardens of the Paris Prefecture, and ended at the Rue Martroi, exactly at the angle of an old wall now pulled down. Here stood the turnstile to which the street owed its name; it was not removed till 1823, when the Municipality built a... more...

LIVES OF ENGLISH POETS. * * * * * SAMUEL JOHNSON. There is, perhaps, no one among our English writers, who for so great a part of his life has been an object of curiosity to his contemporaries as Johnson. Almost every thing he said or did was thought worthy of being recorded by some one or other of his associates; and the public were for a time willing to listen to all they had to say of him. A mass of... more...

INTRODUCTION. When on board H.M.S. 'Beagle,' as naturalist, I was much struck with certain facts in the distribution of the inhabitants of South America, and in the geological relations of the present to the past inhabitants of that continent. These facts seemed to me to throw some light on the origin of species—that mystery of mysteries, as it has been called by one of our greatest... more...

So many unkind things have been said of the affair at Morris Valley that I think it best to publish a straightforward account of everything. The ill nature of the cartoon, for instance, which showed Tish in a pair of khaki trousers on her back under a racing-car was quite uncalled for. Tish did not wear the khaki trousers; she merely took them along in case of emergency. Nor was it true that Tish took... more...

CHAPTER I.INTEREST IN TEACHING. There is a most singular contrariety of opinion prevailing in the community, in regard to the pleasantness of the business of teaching. Some teachers go to their daily task, merely upon compulsion: they regard it as intolerable drudgery. Others love the work: they hover around the school-room as long as they can, and never cease to think, and seldom to talk, of their... more...

"Number 481 is no better, doctor," said the head-warder, in a slightly reproachful accent, looking in round the corner of my door. "Confound 481" I responded from behind the pages of the Australian Sketcher. "And 61 says his tubes are paining him. Couldn't you do anything for him?" "He is a walking drug-shop," said I. "He has the whole British pharmacopaæ... more...

Well, if you want to see one mammoth, muddy masquerade just see Tokyo to-day. I am so amused all the time that if I were to do just as I feel, I should sit down or stand up and call out, as it were, from the housetops to every one in the world to come and see the show. If it were not for the cut of them I should think that all the cast-off clothing had been misdirected and had gone to Japan instead of... more...

NEVER-FAIL BLAKE I Blake, the Second Deputy, raised his gloomy hound's eyes as the door opened and a woman stepped in. Then he dropped them again. "Hello, Elsie!" he said, without looking at her. The woman stood a moment staring at him. Then she advanced thoughtfully toward his table desk. "Hello, Jim!" she answered, as she sank into the empty chair at the desk end. The rustling of... more...

I. The Thing on the Hearth "THE first confirmatory evidence of the thing, Excellency, was the print of a woman's bare foot." He was an immense creature. He sat in an upright chair that seemed to have been provided especially for him. The great bulk of him flowed out and filled the chair. It did not seem to be fat that enveloped him. It seemed rather to be some soft, tough fiber, like the... more...