THE HICKORY LIMB ladys Bailey had a parasol in one hand and a card-case in the other. From her own wide experience in social usage, she was going to initiate the twins into the mystery of formal calls. She had told them earlier in the day that they might bring their younger sister, but later reflection decided her to withdraw this permission. As Katherine and Alice were ready first, it was easy to... more...

PREFACE. It is singular that the first great age of English lyric poetry should have been also the one great age of English dramatic poetry: but it is hardly less singular that the lyric school should have advanced as steadily as the dramatic school declined from the promise of its dawn. Born with Marlowe, it rose at once with Shakespeare to heights inaccessible before and since and for ever, to sink... more...

PENNSYLVANIA Dutch COOKERY In 1683 the Plain Sects began to arrive in William Penn’s Colony seeking a land of peace and plenty. They were a mixed people; Moravians from Bohemia and Moravia, Mennonites from Switzerland and Holland, the Amish, the Dunkards, the Schwenkfelds, and the French Huguenots. After the lean years of clearing the land and developing their farms they established the peace and... more...

On a recent journey to the Pennsylvania oil regions, I stopped one evening with a fellow-traveler at a village which had just been thrown into a turmoil of excitement by the exploits of a horse-thief. As we sat around the tavern hearth, after supper, we heard the particulars of the rogue's capture and escape fully discussed; then followed many another tale of theft and robbery, told amid curling... more...

Joshua 1:1 Now it happened after the death of Moses the servant of Yahweh, that Yahweh spoke to Joshua the son of Nun, Moses' servant, saying, 1:2 Moses my servant is dead; now therefore arise, go over this Jordan, you, and all this people, to the land which I give to them, even to the children of Israel. 1:3 I have given you every place that the sole of your foot will tread on, as I told Moses.... more...

CHAPTER I The Shadow of the Knickerbockers Boughton, had you bid me chantHymns to Peter Stuyvesant.Had you bid me sing of Wouter.(He! the Onion-head! the Doubter!)But to rhyme of this one-mocker,Who shall rhyme to Knickerbocker?—Austin Dobson. Before the writer, as he begins the pleasant task, is an old half-illegible map, or rather, fragment of a map. Near-by are three or four dull prints. They are... more...

To record the woes of authors and to discourse de libris fatalibus seems deliberately to court the displeasure of that fickle mistress who presides over the destinies of writers and their works. Fortune awaits the aspiring scribe with many wiles, and oft treats him sorely. If she enrich any, it is but to make them subject of her sport. If she raise others, it is but to pleasure herself with their... more...

MORE THAN CONQUEROR. Is that a death-bed where the Christian lies? Yes,—but not his: 'Tis death itself there dies. Coleridge. She was not an infant—an unconscious subject of grace. But the Saviour has led through a long sickness, and through death, a daughter of nineteen years, and has made her, and those who loved and watched her, say, We are more than conquerors. To speak of Him, and not to... more...

CHAPTER I Long before men awoke to the vision of America, the Old World was the scene of many stupendous migrations. One after another, the Goths, the Huns, the Saracens, the Turks, and the Tatars, by the sheer tidal force of their numbers threatened to engulf the ancient and medieval civilization of Europe. But neither in the motives prompting them nor in the effect they produced, nor yet in the... more...

CHAPTER I MARBLES: WHERE MADE; TERMS OF THE GAMES; DIFFERENT GAMES; HOW TO ACQUIRE SKILL Each season has its own particular work for the farmer, and he does his work without direction from or consultation with his neighbors or any one else. Each season has its own particular games for the young folks, and they take to them without any suggestion from outsiders, just as young ducks take to water,... more...