pair of words I heartily detest are noble and redman, particularly when they occur together. Some of my egghead friends from the Hub tell me that I shouldn't, since they're merely an ancient colloquialism used to describe a race of aborigines on the American land mass. The American land mass? Where? Why—on Earth, of course—where would ancestors come from? Yes—I know it's not... more...

NOTES DR. JOHNSON AND DR. WARTON. Amongst the poems of the Rev. Thos. Warton, vicar of Basingstoke, who is best remembered as the father of two celebrated sons, is one entitled The Universal Love of Pleasure, commencing— "All human race, from China to Peru, Pleasure, howe'er disguised by art, pursue." &c. &c. Warton died in 1745, and his Poems were published in 1748.... more...

ark knew he shouldn't stop. He was already late for Jennette's birthday party, but the sight of three people out in the open like this was too much. He pulled around and hovered over the undulating flow of glassy magma, frozen on its way to the long, dry Potomac river bed, with its shallow caverns and fascinating mile-wide potholes. Just under an overhanging cliff of half-vitrified soil were... more...

CHAPTER I. She was certainly very pretty, and just then she looked prettier than usual, for the sharp run had brought a more vivid colour to the cheek, and an added sparkle to the eye. She was laughing, too—the rogue—as well she might, for had she not brought her right hand swiftly down upon his left ear when he had chased her, caught her, and deliberately and maliciously kissed her, and did he not... more...

THE BACKGROUND. The fifty years of Dryden's literary production just fill the last half of the seventeenth century. It was a period bristling with violent political and religious prejudices, provocative of strife that amounted to revolution. Its social life ran the gamut from the severity of the Commonwealth Puritan to the unbridled debauchery of the Restoration Courtier. In literature it... more...

THE ROMANCE OF IRISH HISTORY By SIR ROGER CASEMENT, C.M.G. The history of Ireland remains to be written, for the purpose of Irishmen remains yet to be achieved. The struggle for national realization, begun so many centuries ago, is not ended; and if the long story offers a so frequent record of failure, it offers a continuous appeal to the highest motives and a constant exhibition of a most pathetic... more...

A DAY AT THE BEACH. HERE are few of the little readers of "The Nursery" who could not tell of pleasant days spent among green fields and woods, or on the seashore. But in almost every large city, there are many children who have never been out of sight of brick walls.Their homes are in close rooms in narrow streets, and there they live from one year's end to the other. In winter they are... more...

CHAPTER I SAME OLD OCEANTHREE girls stood on the beach watching the waves—the tireless, endless, continuous toss, break, splash; toss, break, splash! Always the same climbing combers smoothly traveling in from eternity, mounting their hills to the playful height of liquid summits, then rolling down in an ocean of foam, to splash on the beach into the most alluring of earth's play toys—the... more...

PREFACE. In issuing this collection of Songs, the author makes the following acknowledgments:— "The American Ça ira" was suggested while reading the French song of that name, from which song the phrase ça ira alone was appropriated. In "The Song of William the Conqueror," his characteristic oath, "By the splendor of God!" is used. In the "Death Song of the Enfants... more...

THE NATURALIST. Castles, cathedrals, and churches, palaces, and parks, and architectural subjects generally, have occupied so many frontispiece pages of our recent numbers, that we have been induced to select the annexed cuts as a pleasant relief to this artificial monotony. They are Curiosities of Nature; and, in truth, more interesting than the proudest work of men's hands. Their economy is much... more...