Chapter I EN ROUTE Likely enough, I would not have remained in Gafsa more than a couple of days. For it was my intention to go from England straight down to the oases of the Djerid, Tozeur and Nefta, a corner of Tunisia left unexplored during my last visit to that country—there, where the inland regions shelve down towards those mysterious depressions, the Chotts, dried-up oceans, they say, where in... more...

CHAPTER I IN WHICH KEZIAH HEARS TWO PROPOSALS AND THE BEGINNING OF A THIRD Trumet in a fog; a fog blown in during the night by the wind from the wide Atlantic. So wet and heavy that one might taste the salt in it. So thick that houses along the main road were but dim shapes behind its gray drapery, and only the gates and fences of the front yards were plainly in evidence to the passers-by. The beach... more...

CHAPTER I MADGE MORTON'S PLAN "I never can bear it!" cried Madge Morton excitedly, throwing herself down on her bed in one of the dormitories of Miss Tolliver's Select School for Girls. "It is not half so bad for Eleanor. She, at least, is going to spend her holiday with people she likes. But for Uncle William and Aunt Sue to leave for California just as school closes, and to send... more...

Henry Weller stood facing a huge three-dimensional picture on the wall of his dining room. "Can't we get rid of it?" he asked, turning to his wife. "I mean, with all due respect, of course." No man enjoys coming into his dining room and having to sit at meals and look at a full-sized picture of his wife's first husband arriving on Venus. Fair's fair, but such a set-up is... more...

ON THE VICE OF NOVEL READING. Ever since the Novel reached the stage of development where it was demonstrated to be the most ingenious vehicle yet designed for conveying the protean thought and fancy of man, there has stood in the judgment book of Public Opinion the decree that novel-reading was a vice. Of course, that judgment did not apply exclusively to the reading of novels. It was a sort of... more...

CHAPTER I. MR. FALKIRK. "We may shut our eyes, but we cannot help knowingThat skies are clear and grass is growing." When one has in charge a treasure which one values greatly, and which, if once made known one is pretty sure to lose, I suppose the impulse of most men would be towards a hiding- place. So, at any rate, felt one of the men in this history. Schools had done their secluding work... more...

WHISTLER STORIES The studios of Chelsea are full of Whistler anecdotes. One tells of a female model to whom he owed some fifteen shillings for sittings. She was a Philistine of the Philistines who knew nothing of her patron's fame and was in no way impressed with his work. One day she told another artist that she had been sitting to a little Frenchman called Whistler, who jumped about his studio... more...

I have already recorded many of the adventures of my friend Martin Hewitt, but among them there have been more of a certain few which were discovered to be related together in a very extraordinary manner; and it is to these that I am now at liberty to address myself. There may have been others—cases which gave no indication of their connection with these; some of them indeed I may have told without a... more...

April 14, 1920. "Hat-pins to match the colour of the eyes are to be very fashionable this year," according to a Trade journal. This should be good news to those Tube-travellers who object to having green hat-pins stuck in their blue eyes. Enterprise cannot be dead if it is really true that a well-known publisher has at last managed to persuade Mr. Winston Churchill to write a few words... more...

August 12, 1914. A gentleman with a foreign name who was arrested in the neighbourhood of the Tyne shipyards last week with measuring gauges and a map in his possession explained, on being charged, that he was looking for work. It is possible that some hard labour may be found for him. "Members of Parliament will not suffer," was the comfortable statement of Mr. Josiah Wedgwood during a speech... more...