CHAPTER I "How serene the joy,when things that are made for each other meetand are joined;but ah,—how rarely they meet and are joined, the thingsthat are made for each other!"—SAO-NAN. When Peter Moore entered the static-room, picked his way swiftly and unnoticingly across the littered floor, and jerked open the frosted glass door of the chief operator's office, the assembled operators... more...

It was before the Idiot's marriage, and in the days when he was nothing more than a plain boarder in Mrs. Smithers-Pedagog's High-class Home for Single Gentlemen, that he put what the School-master termed his "alleged mind" on plans for the amelioration of the condition of the civilized. "The trials of the barbarian are really nothing as compared with the tribulations of civilized... more...

In an old world garden dreaming,Where the flowers had human names,Methought, in fantastic seeming,They disported as squires and dames. Of old in Rosamond's Bower,With it's peacock hedges of yew,One could never find the flowerUnless one was given the clue;So take the key of the wicket,Who would follow my fancy free,By formal knot and clipt thicket,And smooth greensward so fair to see And while... more...

Germany is furnishing us with some interesting news this week. She has successfully accomplished something which, to simple folks who are not diplomatists, seems like a plain, every-day case of robbery. Here is the story of it, and you can judge for yourselves. Some German missionaries have been killed in China, and Germany has seized a Chinese port in revenge. Missionaries are, as you know, holy and... more...

THE FLY ON THE WHEEL The offices of the Governor and the Lieutenant-Governor adjoined. Each had its ante-room, in which a private secretary wrote eternally at a roll-top desk, an excessively plain-featured stenographer rattled the keys of his typewriter, and a smug-faced page yawned over a newspaper, or scanned the cards of visitors with the air of an official censor. At intervals, an electric bell... more...

CHAPTER FIRST. WORKER AND TRADE.   In that antiquity which we who only are the real ancients look back upon as the elder world, counting those days as old which were but the beginning of the time we reckon, there were certain methods with workers that centuries ago ceased to have visible form. The Roman matron, whose susceptibilities from long wear and tear in the observation of fighting gladiators... more...

CANTO V FROM the first circle I descended thusDown to the second, which, a lesser spaceEmbracing, so much more of grief containsProvoking bitter moans.  There, Minos standsGrinning with ghastly feature: he, of allWho enter, strict examining the crimes, Gives sentence, and dismisses them beneath,According as he foldeth him around:For when before him comes th' ill fated soul,It all confesses; and... more...

AN APPRECIATION Though Russell H. Conwell's Acres of Diamonds have been spread all over the United States, time and care have made them more valuable, and now that they have been reset in black and white by their discoverer, they are to be laid in the hands of a multitude for their enrichment. In the same case with these gems there is a fascinating story of the Master Jeweler's life-work... more...

April 5, 1916. A severe blizzard hit London last week, and Mr. Pemberton-Billing has since been heard to admit, however reluctantly, that there are other powers of the air. After more than five weeks the bubble blown by Sir James Dewar at the Royal Institution on February 17th has burst. A still larger bubble, blown by some eminent German scientists as long ago as August, 1914, is said to be on the... more...

INTRODUCTION. Among the notable books of later times-we may say, without exaggeration, of all time—must be reckoned The Confessions of Jean Jacques Rousseau. It deals with leading personages and transactions of a momentous epoch, when absolutism and feudalism were rallying for their last struggle against the modern spirit, chiefly represented by Voltaire, the Encyclopedists, and Rousseau himself—a... more...