A DISCONTENTED BEAUTY. "Leone," cried a loud voice, "where are you? Here, there, everywhere, except just in the place where you should be." The speaker was a tall, stout, good-tempered looking man. Farmer Noel people called him all over the country-side. He stood in the farmyard, looking all the warmer this warm day for his exertions in finding his niece. "Leone," he cried again... more...

KEW PALACE. Innumerable are the instances of princes having sought to perpetuate their memories by the building of palaces, from the Domus Aurea, or golden house of Nero, to the comparatively puny structures of our own times. As specimens of modern magnificence and substantial comfort, the latter class of edifices may be admirable; but we are bound to acknowledge, that in boldness and splendour of... more...

CHAPTER I. PEACEFUL HART RANCH It was somewhere in the seventies when old Peaceful Hart woke to a realization that gold-hunting and lumbago do not take kindly to one another, and the fact that his pipe and dim-eyed meditation appealed to him more keenly than did his prospector's pick and shovel and pan seemed to imply that he was growing old. He was a silent man, by occupation and by nature, so he... more...

"Ther hopped Hawkyn,Ther daunsed Dawkyn,Ther trumped Tomkyn...." The Tournament of Tottenham. In Southampton Row, Bloomsbury, there is a small alley or passage leading into Queen Square, and rendered inaccessible to all but foot passengers by some iron posts. The shops in this passage are of a subdued exterior, and are overshadowed by a dingy old edifice dedicated to St. George the Martyr,... more...

CHAPTER I PRIVATE AND PERSONAL In order to ease my conscience and, further, to disclose certain facts which for the past year or two have, I know, greatly puzzled readers of our daily newspapers, I have decided to here reveal some very curious and, perhaps, sensational circumstances. In fact, after much perplexity and long consideration, I have resolved, without seeking grace or favor, to make a clean... more...

Introduction To the perverse all courtships probably are quaint; but if ever human nature may be allowed the full range of originality, it may very well be in the exciting and very personal moments of making love. Our own peculiar social structure, in which the sexes have so much innocent freedom, and youth is left almost entirely to its own devices in the arrangement of double happiness, is so... more...

CHAPTER I Night had fallen and a warm rain drifting down from the mountains hung in a mist over the railroad yards and obscured the lights of Medicine Bend. Two men dismounting from their drooping horses at the foot of Front Street threw the reins to a man in waiting and made their way on foot across the muddy square to the building which served the new railroad as a station and as division... more...

INTRODUCTION The Short Story. In the rush of modern life, particularly in America, the short story has come to be the most popular type of fiction. Just as the quickly seen, low-priced moving picture show is taking the place of the drama, with the average person, so the short stories that are found so plentifully in the numerous periodicals of the day are supplanting the novel. The short story may be... more...

The story of Rome is the most splendid romance in all history. A few shepherds tend their flocks among volcanic hills, listening by day and night to the awful warnings of the subterranean voice,—born in danger, reared in peril, living their lives under perpetual menace of destruction, from generation to generation. Then, at last, the deep voice swells to thunder, roaring up from the earth's... more...

CHAPTER IDOCTOR AND PATIENT A little girl sat shivering in a corner of a reception room in the fashionable Hotel Voltaire. It was one of a suite of rooms occupied by Mrs. Antoinette Seaver Jones, widely known for her wealth and beauty, and this girl—a little thing of eleven—was the only child of Mrs. Antoinette Seaver Jones, and was named Alora. It was not cold that made her shiver, for across the... more...