hat Kenzie MacKenzie was a mad scientist hardly showed at all. To see him ambling down the street in loose jointed manner, with sandy hair uncombed, blue eyes looking vaguely beyond normal focus, you might think here was a young fellow dreaming over how his gal looked last night. It might never occur to you that he was thinking of—ants. Of course, we fellows in the experimental lab all knew it, but... more...

PREFACE. At a Conference of some friends interested in the subject of Ritual, held on January 17, 1880, the following propositions were, amongst others, agreed to: I. That the evil of unnecessary Diversity in Ritual, as practised in various Churches aiming at the maintenance of Catholic doctrine and usage in the Church of England, is real and great. II. That an effort to moderate it should be... more...

CHAPTER I Fog. A London fog, solid, substantial, yellow as an old dog's tooth or a jaundiced eye. You could not look through it, nor yet gaze up and down it, nor over it; and you only thought you saw it. The eye became impotent, untrustworthy; all senses lay fallow except that of touch; the skin alone conveyed to you with promptness and no incertitude that this thing had substance. You could feel... more...

In 1821, as a contribution to a periodical work—in 1822, as a separate volume—appeared the "Confessions of an English Opium-Eater." The object of that work was to reveal something of the grandeur which belongs potentially to human dreams. Whatever may be the number of those in whom this faculty of dreaming splendidly can be supposed to lurk, there are not perhaps very many in whom it is... more...

INVOCATION TO THE MUSE.Didactic muse Calliope,Expand thy soothing silent wings,Touch chords of measured harmonyWherein the soul ecstatic sings,Let language fraught with living truthFind such expression by thy art,As shall assist the guides of youthTo fire the soul and win the heart.Remove the barriers which so longHave held in thraldom many a mind,Sing to the deaf a ransom-song,Be eyes to those whose... more...

OVER THE WALL Dorothy treated me ill enough that spring. Since the minx had tasted power at Carvel Hall, there was no accounting for her. On returning to town Dr. Courtenay had begged her mother to allow her at the assemblies, a request which Mrs. Manners most sensibly refused. Mr. Marmaduke had given his consent, I believe, for he was more impatient than Dolly for the days when she would become the... more...

MADRID AL FRESCO Madrid is a capital with malice aforethought. Usually the seat of government is established in some important town from the force of circumstances. Some cities have an attraction too powerful for the court to resist. There is no capital of England possible but London. Paris is the heart of France. Rome is the predestined capital of Italy in spite of the wandering flirtations its... more...

CHAPTER I "WHO SPEAKS?" David Steel dropped his eyes from the mirror and shuddered as a man who sees his own soul bared for the first time. And yet the mirror was in itself a thing of artistic beauty—engraved Florentine glass in a frame of deep old Flemish oak. The novelist had purchased it in Bruges, and now it stood as a joy and a thing of beauty against the full red wall over the... more...

In accordance with the advice of Diogenes of Apollonia in the beginning of his treatise on Natural Philosophy—"It appears to me to be well for every one who commences any sort of philosophical treatise to lay down some undeniable principle to start with"—we offer this: All men are created unequal. It would be a most interesting study to trace the growth in the world of the doctrine of... more...

CHAPTER I. THE LUMBER KINGDOM Perhaps the real history of the rise of the lumber industry in the Pacific Northwest will never be written. It will not be set down in these pages. A fragment—vividly illustrative of the whole, yet only a fragment—is all that is reproduced herein. But if that true history be written, it will tell no tales of "self-made men" who toiled in the woods and mills... more...