A VISION.vision came! It was not in the hourOf sleep; but when the unresisted powerOf magic Fancy, threw, with full control,Her half prophetic mantle o’er the soul.The place was thron’d like Britain’s royal halls,And her proud navy deck’d the tap’stried walls.Statesmen and heroes grac’d the pictur’d scene;Fathers who were what since their sons have been;And some whose laurell’d brows... more...

PROEM I LOVE the old melodious laysWhich softly melt the ages through,The songs of Spenser's golden days,Arcadian Sidney's silvery phrase,Sprinkling our noon of time with freshest morning dew. Yet, vainly in my quiet hoursTo breathe their marvellous notes I try;I feel them, as the leaves and flowersIn silence feel the dewy showers,And drink with glad, still lips the blessing of the sky. The... more...

SHE emerges from the shop. She is any woman, and the shop from which she emerges is any shop in any town. She has been shopping. This does not imply that she has been buying anything or that she has contemplated buying anything, but merely that she has been shopping—a very different pursuit from buying. Buying implies business for the shop; shopping merely implies business for the clerks. As stated,... more...

CHAPTER I. The Friends—The Knapsacks—The Queen's Wharf—The Northern Railway—Belle Ewart—The Susan Thomas, Captain and Crew—Musical Performance—The Sly Dog—Misunderstanding—Kempenfeldt Bay. Eugene Coristine and Farquhar Wilkinson were youngish bachelors and fellow members of the Victoria and Albert Literary Society. Thither, on Wednesday evenings, when respectable church-members... more...

CHAPTER I. THE TELEGRAM. "A telegram for you, Andy!" said Arthur Bacon, as he entered the room ofAndy Grant in Penhurst Academy. "A telegram!" repeated Andy, in vague alarm, for the word suggested something urgent—probably bad news of some kind. He tore open the envelope and read the few words of the message: "Come home at once. Something has happened. "MOTHER." "What... more...

REMINISCENCES OF TOLSTOY (Part I.) IN one of his letters to his great-aunt, Alexandra Andreyevna Tolstoy, my father gives the following description of his children: The eldest [Sergei] is fair-haired and good-looking; there is something weak and patient in his expression, and very gentle. His laugh is not infectious; but when he cries, I can hardly refrain from crying, too. Every one says he is like my... more...

PROLOGUE I He was hardly fit to figure in the great review of life. A boy of ten or twelve, in tattered clothes, with an accordion in a case swung over one shoulder like a sack, and under the other arm a wooden cage containing a grey squirrel. It was a December night in London, and the Southern lad had nothing to shelter his little body from the Northern cold but his short velveteen jacket, red... more...

CHAPTER I. BAD WEATHER. It was a gray, windy noon in the beginning of autumn. The sky and the sea were almost of the same color, and that not a beautiful one. The edge of the horizon where they met was an edge no more, but a bar thick and blurred, across which from the unseen came troops of waves that broke into white crests, the flying manes of speed, as they rushed at, rather than ran towards the... more...

FOREWORD N these little plays I have tried to bring before the public the two dominant characteristics of the ideal Christmas season, kindness, expressed by "good will toward men," and the inward joy wrought by kind acts, and suggested by "peace on earth." As Yuletide draws near we like to think of the swell of Christmas feeling, kindness, peace and good will, that rises like a mighty... more...

WHAT air you thinkin' of, Phil? "My wife, Dick." "So was I! Aint it odd how fellers fall to thinkin' of thar little women, when they get a quiet spell like this?" "Fortunate for us that we do get it, and have such gentle bosom guests to keep us brave and honest through the trials and temptations of a life like ours." October moonlight shone clearly on the solitary... more...