The language which I have endeavoured to illustrate in the following pages is the Malay of the British Settlements in the Straits of Malacca, some knowledge of which I have had the opportunity of acquiring during sixteen years’ service in Penang, Province Wellesley, Malacca, Singapore, and Perak. Dialectical peculiarities are so abundant in Malay that it is impossible to teach the colloquial language... more...

THE EARTHQUAKE "Tom, we're having a problem with the gyro-stabilizer," said Mark Faber, gray-haired president of the Faber Electronics Company. "Hope you can find out what's wrong." The eighteen-year-old inventor accepted the challenge with a smile. "I'll be glad to try, sir," he replied. Bud Barclay, a dark-haired young flier and Tom Swift Jr.'s closest... more...

I The Associated Shades Take Action   The House-boat of the Associated Shades, formerly located upon the River Styx, as the reader may possibly remember, had been torn from its moorings and navigated out into unknown seas by that vengeful pirate Captain Kidd, aided and abetted by some of the most ruffianly inhabitants of Hades. Like a thief in the night had they come, and for no better reason than... more...

INTRODUCTION. The conte is a form of fiction in which the French have always delighted and in which they have always excelled, from the days of the jongleurs and the trouvères, past the periods of La Fontaine and Voltaire, down to the present. The conte is a tale, something more than a sketch, it may be, and something less than a short story. In verse it is at times but a mere rhymed anecdote, or it... more...

CHAPTER I. The Arrival in South Norwalk.—The Purchase of the Farm.—A Miser's Peculiarities, and the Villagers' Curiosity. About a mile and a half from the city of South Norwalk, in the State of Connecticut, rises an eminence known as Roton Hill. The situation is beautiful and romantic in the extreme. Far away in the distance, glistening in the bright sunshine of an August morning, roll... more...

INTRODUCTION The Science of Astronomy is sublime and beautiful. Noble, elevating, consoling, divine, it gives us wings, and bears us through Infinitude. In these ethereal regions all is pure, luminous, and splendid. Dreams of the Ideal, even of the Inaccessible, weave their subtle spells upon us. The imagination soars aloft, and aspires to the sources of Eternal Beauty. What greater delight can be... more...

CHAPTER I. I AM going to try if I can't write something about myself. My life has been rather a strange one. It may not seem particularly useful or respectable; but it has been, in some respects, adventurous; and that may give it claims to be read, even in the most prejudiced circles. I am an example of some of the workings of the social system of this illustrious country on the individual native,... more...

INTRODUCTION The English language contains a great many words and phrases which are made up of two or more words combined or related in such a way as to form a new verbal phrase having a distinct meaning of its own and differing in meaning from the sum of the component words taken singly. Income and outgo, for example, have quite definite meanings related, it is true, to come and go and to in and out,... more...

CHAPTER I. "Why don't she come back, father?" The man shook his head, his hand fumbled with the wolfskin robe covering the child, and he made no reply. "She'd come if she knew I was hurted, wouldn't she?" The father nodded, and then turned restlessly toward the door, as though expecting some one. The look was troubled, and the pipe he held was not alight, though he made a... more...

Chapter I His Inheritance It was winter--cold and snow and ice and naked trees and leaden clouds and stinging wind. The house was an ancient mansion on an old street in that city of culture which has given to the history of our nation--to education, to religion, to the sciences, and to the arts--so many illustrious names. In the changing years, before the beginning of my story, the woman's... more...