Miss Mink's Soldier Miss Mink sat in church with lips compressed and hands tightly clasped in her black alpaca lap, and stubbornly refused to comply with the request that was being made from the pulpit. She was a small desiccated person, with a sharp chin and a sharper nose, and narrow faded eyes that through the making of innumerable buttonholes had come to resemble them. For over forty years she... more...

THE WONDER OF LIFE(From His Science Primer, Introduction.)By . Every one has seen a cornfield. If you pluck up one of the innumerable wheat plants which are fixed in the soil of the field, about harvest time, you will find that it consists of a stem which ends in a root at one end and an ear at the other, and that blades or leaves are attached to the sides of the stem. The ear contains a multitude of... more...

LETTERS. From Miss Molly Brown of Kentucky to Miss Nance Oldham of Vermont. Chatsworth, Kentucky. My dearest Nance: Our passage to Antwerp is really engaged and in two weeks Mother and I will be on the water. I can hardly believe it is I, Molly Brown, about to have this "great adventure." That is what Mother and I call this undertaking: "Our great adventure." Mother says it sounds Henry... more...

CHAPTER I. Population of America.—An Anecdote about the Sun.—Where is the Centre of America?—Jonathan cannot get over it, nor can I.—America, the Land of Conjuring.—A Letter from Jonathan decides me to set out for the United States. he population of America is about sixty millions—mostly colonels. Yes, sixty millions—all alive and kicking! If the earth is small,... 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...

Locomotion in the Twentieth Century It is proposed in this book to present in as orderly an arrangement as the necessarily diffused nature of the subject admits, certain speculations about the trend of present forces, speculations which, taken all together, will build up an imperfect and very hypothetical, but sincerely intended forecast of the way things will probably go in this new century.... more...

HART-LEAP WELL Hart-Leap Well is a small spring of water, about five miles from Richmond in Yorkshire, and near the side of the road which leads from Richmond to Askrigg. Its name is derived from a remarkable chase, the memory of which is preserved by the monuments spoken of in the second Part of the following Poem, which monuments do now exist as I have there described them.   The Knight had ridden... more...

CHAPTER I ~ PAUL, THE DIVER "Feeling any better to-day, Paul?" "Guess I'm getting round," and the big, bronzed-faced man raised his eyes to mine as he lay under the awning on the after deck of his pearling lugger. I sat down beside him and began to talk. A mile away the white beach of a little, land-locked bay shimmered under the morning sun, and the drooping fronds of the cocos... more...

The Boors. Hendrik Von Bloom was a boor. My young English reader, do not suppose that I mean any disrespect to Mynheer Von Bloom, by calling him a “boor.” In our good Cape colony a “boor” is a farmer. It is no reproach to be called a farmer. Von Bloom was one—a Dutch farmer of the Cape—a boor. The boors of the Cape colony have figured very considerably in modern history. Although naturally... more...

THE GUEST. He who writes this account is called Joel, the brenn of the tribe of Karnak; he is the son of Marik, who was the son of Kirio, the son of Tiras, the son of Gomer, the son of Vorr, the son of Glenan, the son of Erer, the son of Roderik chosen chief of the Gallic army that, now two hundred and seventy-seven years ago, levied tribute upon Rome. Gallic word for chief. Joel (why should I not say... more...