Published from 1849 to 1856 at Cincinnati, is to be re-established at Boston in February, 1887. When published formerly it was in its character and merits entirely unique, and, notwithstanding the progress of thirty-five years, its position is still unique, and in its essential characteristics different from all nineteenth century literature, and not in competition with any other publication. It was... more...

CHAPTER I THE COMIC IN GENERAL—THE COMIC ELEMENT IN FORMS AND MOVEMENTS—EXPANSIVE FORCE OF THE COMIC. What does laughter mean? What is the basal element in the laughable? What common ground can we find between the grimace of a merry-andrew, a play upon words, an equivocal situation in a burlesque and a scene of high comedy? What method of distillation will yield us invariably the same essence from... more...

THE RED INN In I know not what year a Parisian banker, who had very extensive commercial relations with Germany, was entertaining at dinner one of those friends whom men of business often make in the markets of the world through correspondence; a man hitherto personally unknown to him. This friend, the head of a rather important house in Nuremburg, was a stout worthy German, a man of taste and... more...

INTRODUCTION The object of this book will be throughout its entirety to teach in a practical manner the art of Fly Tying in all its branches. The principles used herein, and the methods of construction employed, are those used by the professional fly-tier who practices fly-making for the sake of art, and tries to achieve with each finished fly, a masterpiece. None of the short-cuts employed by those... more...

THE STORY OF THE TWO FRIARS BY EUGENE FIELD It befell in the year 1662, in which same year were many witchcrafts and sorceries, such as never before had been seen and the like of which will never again, by grace of Heaven, afflict mankind—in this year it befell that the devil came upon earth to tempt an holy friar, named Friar Gonsol, being strictly minded to win that righteous vessel of piety unto... more...

CHAPTER I. THE BALL. Belonging to one of the first families in France, still young, and with a face that would have been agreeable had it not been for the almost ridiculous and disproportionate length of his nose, M. de Lucenay joined to a restless love of constant motion the habit of talking and laughing fearfully loud upon subjects quite at variance with good taste or polished manners, and throwing... more...

ADVERTISEMENT. The American publishers of M. De Tocqueville's "Democracy in America," have been frequently solicited to furnish the work in a form adapted to seminaries of learning, and at a price which would secure its more general circulation, and enable trustees of School District Libraries, and other libraries, to place it among their collections. Desirous to attain these objects, they... more...

GUN PRACTICE IN THE FRENCH NAVY. The gunners of the French fleet are possessed of a skill which is recognized by all the maritime powers, and these picked men proved this at the siege of Paris, where they made themselves illustrious, not only by their courage and their coolness, but also by the accuracy of their firing. Nothing is neglected, moreover, to keep up the precision of hand and eye that... more...

I. RED LAKE Shefford halted his tired horse and gazed with slowly realizing eyes. A league-long slope of sage rolled and billowed down to Red Lake, a dry red basin, denuded and glistening, a hollow in the desert, a lonely and desolate door to the vast, wild, and broken upland beyond. All day Shefford had plodded onward with the clear horizon-line a thing unattainable; and for days before that he had... more...

CHAPTER ONE GOING WEST Father and mother settled on the Kansas prairie in the early fifties. At that time Kansas was the frontier. Near neighbors were twenty miles or more apart. There was no railroad; no stages supplied the vast unsettled region. A few supplies were freighted by wagon. However, little was needed from civilized sources, for the frontier teemed with game. Myriads of prairie chickens... more...