WHY AND HOW I CAME TO CALIFORNIA. Some months previous to the Mexican War, my brother David Dudley Field, of New York City, wrote two articles for the Democratic Review upon the subject of the Northwestern Boundary between the territory of the United States and the British Possessions. One of these appeared in the June, and the other in the November number of the Review for 1845.[1] While writing these... more...

I Less than a hundred miles from the city of Gotham, across broad green fields, dotted into squares and oblong valleys by full-leafed maple, and elm, and mulberry, was the village of Brookfield. A hundred years of expansion in the surrounding land had acted inversely with the little hamlet, and had pinched it into a hermitical isolation. The Brookfieldians had discovered a huge beetle in the amber of... more...

Twenty-five years ago Cyril Bezdek and E. Carter Dorwin would have met in a private railway car belonging to one of them. They might even have met in a private train. At any rate they would have met in absolute privacy. But it being the present, they had to be content with a series of adjoining rooms taking up less than one half of a car on the Super-Sachem, fastest coast-to-coast train in the country.... more...

CHAPTER I. A DOUBLE ENIGMA. "I'm afraid that he won't come," said Laura McIntyre, in a disconsolate voice. "Why not?" "Oh, look at the weather; it is something too awful." As she spoke a whirl of snow beat with a muffled patter against the cosy red-curtained window, while a long blast of wind shrieked and whistled through the branches of the great white-limbed elms... more...

I.  It was when coming back to the mines, after a trip to Monterey, that the Girl first met him. It happened, too, just at a time when her mind was ripe to receive a lasting impression. But of all this the boys of Cloudy Mountain Camp heard not a word, needless to say, until long afterwards. Lolling back on the rear seat of the stage, her eyes half closed,—the sole passenger now, and with the seat... more...

EXCELSIOR. "Goblin, lead them up and down." The ruddy glow of sunset was already fading into the sombre shadows of night, when two travellers might have been observed swiftly—at a pace of six miles in the hour—descending the rugged side of a mountain; the younger bounding from crag to crag with the agility of a fawn, while his companion, whose aged limbs seemed ill at ease in the heavy... more...

SCENE: Judge Dunfumy's Court. PERSONS: Judge Dunfumy, Officer Simpson and another, Jemima               Flapcakes, Cliff Mullins, John Barnes, two lawyers,               a clerk, a pretty girl and her escort. SETTING: Usual court-room arrangement, except that there is a               large red arrow pointing off-stage left,... more...

Chapter I: "OUT IN ARIZONA, WHERE THE BAD MEN ARE" "So you think you'd like to work in the Park Office at Grand Canyon?" "Sure!" "Where is Grand Canyon?" I asked as an afterthought. I knew just that little about the most spectacular chasm in the world, when I applied for an appointment there as a Government worker. Our train pulled into the rustic station in the wee... more...

PREFACE. This work is called the Critique of Practical Reason, not of the pure practical reason, although its parallelism with the speculative critique would seem to require the latter term. The reason of this appears sufficiently from the treatise itself. Its business is to show that there is pure practical reason, and for this purpose it criticizes the entire practical faculty of reason. If it... more...

THE HUT IN THE WOODThe woman who told me this, and other strange tales which I may one day try to put together, had no gift of writing, but only a pathetic regard for those who had. I say pathetic, because to me her extraordinary experiences so far outvalue the tinkling art of recording them as to make her simple admiration for the artist little short of absurd. She had herself a pretty talent for... more...