High noon at Talbot’s Cross-roads, with the mercury standing at ninety-eight in the shade—though there was not much shade worth mentioning in the immediate vicinity of the Cross-roads post-office, about which, upon the occasion referred to, the few human beings within sight and sound were congregated. There were trees enough a few hundred yards away, but the post-office stood boldly and... more...

THE IRON FURROW The Ventisquero Range stretches across the circumference of one's vision in a procession of mountains that come tall and blue out of the distant north and seemingly march past to vanish in the remote south like azure phantoms. The mountains wall the horizon and dominate the mesa, their black forest-clad flanks crumpled and broken and gashed by cañons, lifting above timber-line... more...

MAKING A FRIEND. Two lads were standing in one of the bastions of a fort looking over the sea. There were neither guards nor sentinels there. The guns stood on their carriages, looking clean and ready for action, but this was not the result of care and attention, but simply because in so dry a climate iron rusts but little. A close examination would have shown that the wooden carriages on which they... more...

Shortly after there was erected to his memory in the chancel, at the expense, it is understood, of his noble friend the Earl of Northumberland, a fine marble monument, bearing the above neat and appropriate inscription. St Christopher's, a very old church, with its records (still preserved) extending back in an almost unbroken series to 1488, passed through many vicissitudes before itwas finally... more...

SONNET—MY HEART SHALL BE THY GARDEN My heart shall be thy garden.  Come, my own,   Into thy garden; thine be happy hours   Among my fairest thoughts, my tallest flowers,From root to crowning petal, thine alone. Thine is the place from where the seeds are sown   Up to the sky enclosed, with all its showers.   But ah, the birds, the birds!  Who shall build bowersTo keep these thine?  O... more...

In order to clear up any misunderstanding or false impressions regarding the amazing case of my beloved friend and co-worker, Professor Howard E. Edwards, I submit herewith, extracts from the professor's notebook, which I found on the desk. Evans Barclay, B.S. Fellow IRE. Jan. 25. Last night, in my dreams, I was a monstrous ant, and had been digging myself a burrow in the soft fresh earth. The... more...

DOUBLE NEWS "Here they come back, Tom!" "Yes, I see them coming. Can you count them yet? Don't tell me any of our boys are missing!" and the speaker, one of two young men, wearing the uniform of the Lafayette Escadrille, who were standing near the hangars of the aviation field "somewhere in France," gazed earnestly up toward the blue sky that was dotted with fleecy, white... more...

The Letter from Jude 1:1 a servant of Jesus Christ, and brother of James, to those who are called, sanctified by God the Father, and kept for Jesus Christ: 1:2 Mercy to you and peace and love be multiplied. 1:3 Beloved, while I was very eager to write to you about our common salvation, I was constrained to write to you exhorting you to contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all delivered to... more...

Maurice Barrett sat waiting in the old lime-kiln built by the British in the war of 1812—a white ruin like much-scattered marble, which stands bowered in trees on a high part of the island. He had, to the amusement of the commissioner, hired this place for a summer study, and paid a carpenter to put a temporary roof over it, with skylight, and to make a door which could be fastened. Here on the... more...

WASHOUT. We had hardly settled down to Mess when an orderly, armed with a buff slip, shot through the door, narrowly missed colliding with the soup, and pulled up by Grigson's chair. Grigson is our Flight Commander—one of those rugged and impenetrable individuals who seem impervious to any kind of shock. There is a legend that on one occasion four machine-gun bullets actually hit him and bounced... more...