AN OUTLINE NARRATIVE TRACING BRIEFLY THE CAUSES, CONNECTIONS, AND CONSEQUENCES OF THE GREAT EVENTS THE RECENT DAYS (1910-1914) CHARLES F. HORNE The awful, soul-searing tragedy of Europe's great war of 1914 came to most men unexpectedly. The real progress of the world during the five years preceding the war had been remarkable. All thinkers saw that the course of human civilization was being... more...

CHAPTER IELLIOTT PLANS AND FATE DISPOSES Now and then the accustomed world turns a somersault; one day it faces you with familiar features, the next it wears a quite unrecognizable countenance. The experience is, of course, nothing new, though it is to be doubted whether it was ever staged so dramatically and on so vast a scale as during the past four years. And no one to whom it happens is ever the... more...

AWAKENING Through the massive skylight illuminating the hall at Robin Hill, the July sunlight at five o'clock fell just where the broad stairway turned; and in that radiant streak little Jon Forsyte stood, blue-linen-suited. His hair was shining, and his eyes, from beneath a frown, for he was considering how to go downstairs, this last of innumerable times, before the car brought his father and... more...

5th July As I left the Palais-Bourbon at five o'clock that afternoon, it rejoiced my heart to breathe in the sunny air. The sky was bland, the river gleamed, the foliage was fresh and green. Everything seemed to whisper an invitation to idleness. Along the Pont de la Concorde, in the direction of the Champs-Elysées, victorias and landaus kept rolling by. In the shadow of the lowered... more...

CHAPTER I It had occurred to her early that in her position—that of a young person spending, in framed and wired confinement, the life of a guinea-pig or a magpie—she should know a great many persons without their recognising the acquaintance.  That made it an emotion the more lively—though singularly rare and always, even then, with opportunity still very much smothered—to see any one come in... more...

The Mind of Jesus! What a study is this! To attain a dim reflection of it, is the ambition of angels—higher they can not soar. “To be conformed to the image of His Son!”—it is the end of God in the predestination of His Church from all eternity. “We shall be like Him!”—it is the Bible picture of heaven! In a former little volume, we pondered some of the gracious Words which proceeded out... more...

CHAPTER I. OUTLAWED! The whole of my story seems to me to begin on the day when I stood, closely guarded, before my judges, in the great circle of the people at the Folk Moot of the men of Somerset gathered on the ancient hill of Brent. All my life before that seems to have been as nothing, so quiet and uneventful it was compared to what came after. I had grown from boyhood to manhood in my... more...

Ida was a kind-hearted girl, and one day when crossing a bridge near her home, she saw two boys on the banks of the stream, trying to drown a little dog. Ida, like all good girls, could not bear to see anything suffer, and was brave enough to try and prevent it. So, she ran to the shore, wringing her hands, and crying loudly, "Oh! you bad, wicked boys! how can you be so cruel to that poor little... more...

PREFACE. 1. I must pray the readers of the following Lectures to remember that the duty at present laid on me at Oxford is of an exceptionally complex character. Directly, it is to awaken the interest of my pupils in a study which they have hitherto found unattractive, and imagined to be useless; but more imperatively, it is to define the principles by which the study itself should be guided; and to... more...

Chapter I At half-past six o'clock on Sunday night Barnabas came out of his bedroom. The Thayer house was only one story high, and there were no chambers. A number of little bedrooms were clustered around the three square rooms—the north and south parlors, and the great kitchen. Barnabas walked out of his bedroom straight into the kitchen where the other members of the family were. They sat... more...