THE GRAIN SHIP I could not help listening to the talk at the next table, because the orchestra was quiet and the conversation unrestrained; then, too, a nautical phrasing caught my ear and aroused my attention. For I had been a lifelong student of nautical matters. A side glance showed me the speaker, a white-haired, sunburned old fellow in immaculate evening dress. With him at the table in the... more...

Chapter 1. TEN YEARS LATER 'If anyone had told me what wonderful changes were to take place here in ten years, I wouldn't have believed it,' said Mrs Jo to Mrs Meg, as they sat on the piazza at Plumfield one summer day, looking about them with faces full of pride and pleasure. 'This is the sort of magic that money and kind hearts can work. I am sure Mr Laurence could have no nobler... more...

Lend thy serious hearing to what I shall unfold. -Hamlet. COME with me, gentle reader, on the wings of fancy into the mild and genial latitude of the Tyrrhenian Sea. The delightful region of the Mediterranean has been the poet's ready theme for ages; then let us thitherward, with high hopes (and appreciating eyes) to enjoy the storied scenery of its shores. Touch, if you will, at Gibraltar; see... more...

John Lansing first met Mary Hollister at the house of his friend Pinney, whose wife was her sister. She had soft gray eyes, a pretty color in her cheeks, rosy lips, and a charming figure. In the course of the evening somebody suggested mind-reading as a pastime, and Lansing, who had some powers, or supposed powers, in that direction, although he laughed at them himself, experimented in turn with the... more...

I In the early eighties, when my brother Ajax and I were raising cattle in the foothills of Southern California, our ranch-house was used as a stopping-place by the teamsters hauling freight across the Coast Range; and after the boom began, while the village of Paradise was evolving itself out of rough timber, we were obliged to furnish all comers with board and lodging. Hardly a day passed without... more...

Opens the Ball. If ever there was a man who possessed a gem in the form of a daughter of nineteen, that man was Samuel Ravenshaw; and if ever there was a girl who owned a bluff, jovial, fiery, hot-tempered, irascible old father, that girl was Elsie Ravenshaw. Although a gem, Elsie was exceedingly imperfect. Had she been the reverse she would not have been worth writing about. Old Ravenshaw, as his... more...

VENETIAN SCHOOL. This School would have required no farther illustration from any other pen, had Signor Antonio Zanetti, in his highly esteemed work upon Venetian Painting, included a more ample consideration of the artists of the state, instead of confining his attention wholly to those, whose productions, ornamenting the churches and other public places, had all been completed in the city of Venice... more...

Perhaps the reader may not feel in these papers that inner solidarity which the writer is conscious of; and it is in this doubt that the writer wishes to offer a word of explanation. He owns, as he must, that they have every appearance of a group of desultory sketches and essays, without palpable relation to one another, or superficial allegiance to any central motive. Yet he ventures to hope that the... more...

"Well, boys, what do you think of this for a play-ground? Something like, ain't it?" And well might Tom Lockyer say so. To be out in the woods on a fine summer morning, with the whole day clear, is a pleasure which any boy can appreciate, more especially such an active one as Master Tom; and he and his two cousins had certainly enjoyed it to the utmost. Ever since breakfast they had been... more...

CHAPTER I Some Old Friends Since these Reminiscences are really what they profess to be, random and informal, I hope I may be pardoned for setting down so many small things. In looking back over my life, the impressions which come most vividly to my mind are mental pictures of my old associates. In speaking of these friends in this chapter, I would not have it thought that many others, of whom I have... more...