CHAPTER I. AMAEL AND VORTIGERN. Towards the commencement of the month of November of the year 811, a numerous cavalcade was one afternoon wending its way to the city of Aix-la-Chapelle, the capital of the Empire of Charles the Great—an Empire that had been so rapidly increased by rapidly succeeding conquests over Germany, Saxony, Bavaria, Bohemia, Hungary, Italy and Spain, that Gaul, as formerly... more...

The first man to return from beyond the Great Frontier may be welcomed ... but will it be as a curiosity, rather than as a hero...? There was the usual welcoming crowd for a celebrity, and the usual speeches by the usual politicians who met him at the airport which had once been twenty miles outside of Croton, but which the growing city had since engulfed and placed well within its boundaries. But... more...

INTRODUCTION. Were not every chapter of the history of the human mind too precious an inheritance to be willingly relinquished,—for appalling as its contents may be, the value of the materials it may furnish may be inestimable,—we might otherwise be tempted to wish that the miserable record in which the excesses occasioned by the witch mania are narrated, could be struck out of its pages, and for... more...

CHAPTER I HIS HIGHNESS   His Highness came by the nickname honestly enough and yet those who heard it for the first time had difficulty in repressing a smile at the incongruity of the title. In fact perhaps no term could have been found that would have been less appropriate. For Walter King possessed neither dignity of rank nor of stature. On the contrary he was a short, snub-nosed boy of fifteen, the... more...

I Frisky Squirrel Finds Much To Do Frisky Squirrel was a lively little chap. And he was very bold, too. You see, he was so nimble that he felt he could always jump right out of danger—no matter whether it was a hawk chasing him, or a fox springing at him, or a boy throwing stones at him. He would chatter and scold at his enemies from some tree-top. And it was seldom that he was so frightened that he... more...

CHAPTER I HEROES IN MOLESKIN "Third down, four yards to gain!" The referee trotted out of the scrimmage line and blew his whistle; the Hillton quarter-back crouched again behind the big center; the other backs scurried to their places as though for a kick. "9--6--12!" called quarter huskily. "Get through!" shrieked the St. Eustace captain. "Block this kick!"... more...

CHAPTER I. Hindus—​Mohammedans—​Portuguese—​English—​Dutch—​ Legal basis of Dutch possession—​British occupation—​ Return of Dutch—​Culture system—​Eruption of Mount Krakatoa. In the centre of that region of countless islands termed not inaptly the... more...

COLONEL CHABERT "HULLO! There is that old Box-coat again!" This exclamation was made by a lawyer's clerk of the class called in French offices a gutter-jumper—a messenger in fact—who at this moment was eating a piece of dry bread with a hearty appetite. He pulled off a morsel of crumb to make into a bullet, and fired it gleefully through the open pane of the window against which he was... more...

THE PREFACE. Nothing is more easy than to discover a thing already found out. This is verified in me and that anonymous gentleman, whom the public prints have lately complimented with a Discovery to Prevent Street Robberies; though, by the by, we have only his vain ipse dixit, and the ostentatious outcry of venal newswriters in his behalf. But to strip him of his borrowed plumes, these are to remind... more...

CHAPTER I. MARIE. Marie was tired. She had been walking nearly the whole day, and now the sun was low in the west, and long level rays of yellow light were spreading over the country, striking the windows of a farmhouse here and there into sudden flame, or resting more softly on tree-tops and hanging slopes. They were like fiddle-bows, Marie thought; and at the thought she held closer something that... more...