THE ROLL-CALL OF THE REEF. "Yes, sir," said my host the quarryman, reaching down the relics from their hook in the wall over the chimney-piece; "they've hung there all my time, and most of my father's. The women won't touch 'em; they're afraid of the story. So here they'll dangle, and gather dust and smoke, till another tenant comes and tosses 'em out... more...

The scene of the Epic is the ancient kingdom of the Kurus which flourished along the upper course of the Ganges; and the historical fact on which the Epic is based is a great war which took place between the Kurus and a neighbouring tribe, the Panchalas, in the thirteenth or fourteenth century before Christ. According to the Epic, Pandu and Dhrita-rashtra, who was born blind, were brothers. Pandu died... more...

UNGUARDED GATES Wide open and unguarded stand our gates,And through them presses a wild, motley throng—Men from the Volga and the Tartar steppes,Featureless figures of the Hoang-Ho,Malayan, Scythian, Teuton, Celt, and Slav,Flying the old world's poverty and scorn;These bringing with them unknown gods and rites,Those, tiger passions, here to stretch their claws.In street and alley what strange... more...

TIME'S REVIEW OF CHARACTER.   ROBESPIERRE. Some characters are a puzzle to history, and none is more so than that of Robespierre. According to popular belief, this personage was a blood-thirsty monster, a vulgar tyrant, who committed the most unheard-of enormities, with the basely selfish object of raising himself to supreme power—of becoming the Cromwell of the Revolution. Considering that... more...

"AS GOOD AS A BETTER." Dr. Andrew Wilson (in "Science Jottings," in the Illustrated London News) dares disparage Golf "as an ideal game for young men," venturing to advocate the preferential claims of fogeyish Cricket, and even of futile Lawn Tennis— "O Scots, wha hae wi' BALFOUR teed." What wull ye say to this disloyal, slanderous, sacrilegious ANDY? He hints... more...

Chapter One. There was a loud rattling noise, as if money was being shaken up in a box. A loud crashing bang, as if someone had banged the box down on a table. A rap, as if a knife had been dropped. Then somebody, in a petulant voice full of vexation and irritability, roared out: “Bother!” And that’s exactly how it was, leaving Aleck Donne, who looked about sixteen or seventeen, scratching... more...

Chapter 1 Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. Everything was in confusion in the Oblonskys' house. The wife had discovered that the husband was carrying on an intrigue with a French girl, who had been a governess in their family, and she had announced to her husband that she could not go on living in the same house with him. This position of affairs had... more...

CLAUDINE'S DOVES. BY MRS. E. W. LATIMER. A few days since, as I was driving in the Bois de Boulogne with a friend, a slender, sweet young girl was pointed out to me. She was walking beside her mother, and there was a loving, tender look in her blue eyes, a shrinking modesty in her deportment, which interested me at the first glance. She was apparently about fifteen. I observed to the friend who... more...

As his coach sped through dusk-darkened Jersey meadows, Ronald Lovegear, fourteen years with Allied Electronix, embraced his burden with both arms, silently cursing the engineer who was deliberately rocking the train. In his thin chest he nursed the conviction that someday there would be an intelligent robot at the throttle of the 5:10 to Philadelphia. He carefully moved one hand and took a notebook... more...

LECTURE I. Bertha to Osburga. In the short review of the present state of English Art, given you last year, I left necessarily many points untouched, and others unexplained. The seventh lecture, which I did not think it necessary to read aloud, furnished you with some of the corrective statements of which, whether spoken or not, it was extremely desirable that you should estimate the balancing weight.... more...