Standing at the armor-glass front of the observation deck and watching the mountains rise and grow on the horizon, Conn Maxwell gripped the metal hand-rail with painful intensity, as though trying to hold back the airship by force. Thirty minutes--twenty-six and a fraction of the Terran minutes he had become accustomed to--until he'd have to face it. Then, realizing that he never, in his own... more...

August 9th, 1825. Oh, thou surpassing beauty! that dost liveShrined in yon silent stream of glorious light!Spirit of harmony! that through the vastAnd cloud-embroidered canopy art spreadingThy wings, that o’er our shadowy earth hang brooding,Like a pale silver haze, betwixt the moonAnd the world’s darker orb: beautiful, hail!Hail to thee! from her midnight throne of ether,Night looks upon the... more...

Chapter One. “There’ll be such a game directly. Just listen to old Dicksee.” I was very low-spirited, but, as the bright, good-looking lad at my side nudged me with his elbow, I turned from casting my eyes round the great bare oak-panelled room, with its long desks, to the kind of pulpit at the lower end, facing a bigger and more important-looking erection at the upper end, standing upon a broad... more...

CHAPTER I AN OUTLINE OF SHAKESPEARE'S LIFE Our Knowledge of Shakespeare.—No one in Shakespeare's day seems to have been interested in learning about the private lives of the dramatists. The profession of play writing had scarcely begun to be distinguished from that of play acting, and the times were not wholly gone by when all actors had been classed in public estimation as vagabonds. While... more...

CHAPTER IWHAT WILL BECOME OF ME? A London dining-room was lighted with gas, which showed a table of small dimensions, with a vase of somewhat dirty and dilapidated grasses in the centre, and at one end a soup tureen, from which a gentleman had helped himself and a young girl of about thirteen, without much apparent consciousness of what he was about, being absorbed in a pile of papers, pamphlets, and... more...

THE WESTERN TRAIL “An overland highway to the Western sea” was the thought variously expressed by many men in both public and private life among the French, English, and Americans from very early times. In 1659 Pierre Radisson and a companion, by way of the Great Lakes, Fox, and “Ouisconsing” Rivers, discovered the “east fork” of the “Great River” and crossed to the “west fork,” up... more...

CHAPTER I Mrs. Ussher was having a small house party in the country over New Year's Day. This is equivalent to saying that the half dozen most fashionable people in New York were out of town. Certain human beings are admitted to have a genius for discrimination in such matters as objects of art, pigs or stocks. Mrs. Ussher had this same instinct in regard to fashion, especially where fashions in... more...

CHICK, D.D. Right in the very heart of Christmas-tree Land there was a forest of firs that pointed to the sky as straight as steeples. A hush lay over the forest, as if there were something very wonderful there, that might be meant for you if you were quiet and waited for it to come. Perhaps you have felt like that when you walked down the aisle of a church, with the sun shining through the lovely... more...

"ONE OF THOSE IMPOSSIBLE AMERICANS" "N'avez-vous pas—" she was bravely demanding of the clerk when she saw that the bulky American who was standing there helplessly dangling two flaming red silk stockings which a copiously coiffured young woman assured him were bien chic was edging nearer her. She was never so conscious of the truly American quality of her French as when a... more...

MAN AND WIVES. A TRAVESTY. By MOSE SKINNER. CHAPTER FOURTH. THE HALF-WAY HOUSE he first person to discover that ANN BRUMMET had left the house, was Mrs. LADLE, Now, ever since the Hon. MICHAEL had asked ANN to go to the circus, Mrs. LADLE had hated her. But when he took ANN to the Agricultural Fair, and bought her a tin-type album and a box of initial note-paper, Mrs. LADLE was simply raving. Whether... more...