A MYSTERIOUS DEATH “He is dead!” Johnny Thompson felt the grip of the speaker’s hand on his arm and started involuntarily. How could this strange fellow know that Frank Langlois was dead—if he was dead? And was he? They were surrounded by inky blackness. It was the thick darkness of a subterranean cavern, a mine. This was a gold mine. Three minutes ago their electric torch had flickered out and... more...

CHAPTER I. The Valley. In one of father La Fontaine's books, may be found a description of a lovely valley, the residence of a beautiful and modest maiden, and of the heroine of this Arcadia he writes: "There stands our heroine, as lovely as the valley, her home, and as virtuous and good as her mother, who has devoted a lifetime to the education of her daughter." But with the history of... more...

"After us, the deluge!" said Louis XV of France. He died in 1774, and the remaining quarter of the eighteenth century witnessed social changes the most radical, the most widespread which had convulsed civilization since the fall of Rome. "As soon as our peasants seek education," said Catharine II of Russia to one of her ministers, "neither you nor I will retain our places."... more...

Richmond Palace Richmond has comparatively but few antiquarian or poetical visiters, notwithstanding all its associations with the ancient splendour of the English court, and the hallowed names of Pope and Thomson. Maurice sings, To thy sequester'd bow'rs and wooded height, That ever yield my soul renew'd delight, Richmond, I fly! with all thy beauties fir'd, By raptur'd poets... more...

MODERN TYPES. (By Mr. Punch's own Type Writer.) No. XVIII.—THE UNDOMESTIC DAUGHTER. The race of daughters is large, but their characteristics, vocations, and aptitudes, are but little understood by the general public. It is expected of them by their mothers that they should be a comfort, by their fathers that they should be inexpensive and unlike their brothers, and by their brothers that they... more...

To many people in England the mention of Australia conjures pictures of tented gold-fields and tall, black-bearded, red-shirted bushrangers; of mounted police recruited from "flaxen-haired younger sons of good old English families, well-groomed and typically Anglo-Saxon"; of squatters and sheep runs; of buckjumpers ridden by the most daring riders in the world; and of much more to the same... more...

THE WIFE CATCHERS. A LEGEND OF MY UNCLE’S BOOTS. In Four Chapters. Haberdashers, continued my friend the boot, are wonderful people; they make the greatest show out of the smallest stock—whether of brains or ribbons—of any men in the world. A stranger could not pass through the village of Ballybreesthawn without being attracted by a shop which occupied the corner of the Market-square and the main... more...

MY VILLAGE HOME I was a foundling. But until I was eight years of age I thought I had a mother like other children, for when I cried a woman held me tightly in her arms and rocked me gently until my tears stopped falling. I never got into bed without her coming to kiss me, and when the December winds blew the icy snow against the window panes, she would take my feet between her hands and warm them,... more...

CHAPTER IEY Towards the close of the year 1744 there landed at Madras, as writer in the service of the East India Company, a young Englishman just entering the twentieth year of his existence, named Robert Clive. The earlier years of the life of this young man had not been promising. Born at Styche, near Market Drayton, in Shropshire, he had been sent, when three years old, to be cared for and educated... more...

MORE THAN SATISFIED! (With Mr. Punch's apologies to the Daily Telegraph's "Academic Enthusiast.") "She-Pantaloons? seedy? Now, do we look like it?" The speaker was a tall, robust maiden with fair hair; on her knee was an edition (without notes) of the Anabasis of Xenophon, and by her side was Liddell and Scott's Lexicon, in which she had just been tracking an... more...