Laurence leaned his arms upon the broad wooden hand-rail of the bulwarks. The water hissed away from the side. Immediately below it was laced by shifting patterns of white foam, and stained pale green, violet, and amber, by the light shining out through the rounds of the port-poles. Further away it showed blue black, but for a glistening on the hither side of the vast ridge and furrow. The smoke from... more...

I THE DAY BY OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES Welcome to the day returning,Dearer still as ages flow,While the torch of Faith is burning,Long as Freedom's altars glow!See the hero whom it gave usSlumbering on a mother's breast;For the arm he stretched to save usBe its morn forever blest! Vain is empire's mad temptation!Not for him an earthly crown!He whose sword has freed a nationStrikes the... more...

She had been asleep. Now she stretched luxuriously beneath the crisp white sheet that the vapid August heat decreed. From memory to memory her dream-fogged mind drifted, and to the yet-to-be. It was good to remember, and to imagine, and to see and feel and hear.... She smiled. She was Ruth Halsey, fourteen, brunette, and pretty. Earl, and Harry, and Buhl had told her she was pretty. Especially Buhl.... more...

THE SPREAD EAGLE In his extreme youth the adulation of all with whom he came in contact was not a cross to Fitzhugh Williams. It was the fear of expatriation that darkened his soul. From the age of five to the age of fourteen he was dragged about Europe by the hair of his head. I use his own subsequent expression. His father wanted him to be a good American; his mother wanted him to be a polite... more...

The leader climbed sharply in a bank to the left, and the two others followed close behind. Their jet streams cut off at very near the same time. Before their speed slowed to stalling, the rotors unfolded from the canopy hump and beat the air viciously, the steam wisping back in brief fingers. Under power again, they dipped playfully in tightening circles toward the plot-mottled earth. The fields... more...

DUSK "There, sonny—behold the city of your dreams! Good old New York, as per schedule.… Gee! Ain't she great?" The slim, self-possessed youth of twenty hardly seemed to expect an answer; but the man addressed in this pert manner, though the senior of the pair by six years, felt that the emotion throbbing in his heart must be allowed to bubble forth lest he became hysterical. "Old... more...

PREFACES, like long sermons to fashionable congregations, are distasteful to most readers, and in no very high favor with us. A deep interest in the welfare of South Carolina, and the high esteem in which we held the better, and more sensible class of her citizens, prompted us to sit down in Charleston, some four years ago (as a few of our friends are aware), and write this history. The malady of her... more...

INTRODUCTION These stories originally appeared in two volumes, the first in 1884, the second in 1886. The latter part of the present edition is thus separated from the first part by a lapse of two years. Strindberg's views were continually undergoing changes. Constancy was never a trait of his. He himself tells us that opinions are but the reflection of a man's experiences, changing as his... more...

THE YEARS BEFORE Outline Arranged by Hamilton Williamson from In the years when Victorian standards and ideals began to dance an increasingly rapid jig before amazed lookers-on, who presently found themselves dancing as madly as the rest—in these years, there lived in Mayfair, in a slice of a house, Robert Gareth-Lawless and his lovely young wife. So light and airy was she to earthly vision and so... more...

It was on a sultry August evening in the memorable year 1887 that a stranger, whose anxious gaze, now and again fixed on the entrance, denoted the fact that he was awaiting the arrival of one of the Members, crossed and re-crossed the pavement of the Hall of the Reform Club with a step that indicated a high condition of nervous trepidation. To the casual observer he might have passed for a solicitor in... more...