CHAPTER I. Travellers left and entered our car at every stopping of the train. Three persons, however, remained, bound, like myself, for the farthest station: a lady neither young nor pretty, smoking cigarettes, with a thin face, a cap on her head, and wearing a semi-masculine outer garment; then her companion, a very loquacious gentleman of about forty years, with baggage entirely new and arranged in... more...

THE APPEAL If there is any virtue in advertisements—and a journalist should be the last person to say that there is not—the American nation is rapidly reaching a state of physical efficiency of which the world has probably not seen the like since Sparta. In all the American newspapers and all the American monthlies are innumerable illustrated announcements of "physical-culture specialists,"... more...

CHAPTER I. THE APPARITION. "Be patient a few: minutes longer! There's a man beckoning to go with us," said the boatman to his passengers, two women and one man. The man was gray-haired, of slender form, rubicund face, and blue eyes of a kindly, but absent-minded and weary expression; a heavy moustache, wholly covering the upper lip, seemed out of keeping with this inoffensive face. He wore... more...

JOSEPH THE DREAMER. Two boys, Joseph and Benjamin, sons of a rich Eastern shepherd, lived in their father's wide tent in the great valley of Hebron. Joseph was about seventeen years of age, and tall and strong, so that he could drive sheep, herd cattle, and work in the harvest field. Benjamin was a little red-cheeked boy of five, with merry brown eyes, and his brother Joseph loved him very dearly,... more...

It was one of those exquisite days that come in every winter, in which it seems no longer the dead body, but the lovely ghost of summer. Such a day bears to its sister of the happier time something of the relation the marble statue bears to the living form; the sense it awakes of beauty is more abstract, more ethereal; it lifts the soul into a higher region than will summer day of lordliest splendour.... more...

No description available

FOREWORD These stories are founded on memories of my childhood on the farm. They first took definite form in response to the requests of my own little boys: "Tell me about when you were little, Mama." Some of them were demanded over and over again; but it remained for Bobby, the youngest, to insist that they be "put into a book." Many a time, after listening to one of them, he would... more...

To the Senate and House of Representatives: The Congress assembles this year under the shadow of a great calamity. On the sixth of September, President McKinley was shot by an anarchist while attending the Pan-American Exposition at Buffalo, and died in that city on the fourteenth of that month. Of the last seven elected Presidents, he is the third who has been murdered, and the bare recital of this... more...

TRACING BRIEFLY THE CAUSES, CONNECTIONS, AND CONSEQUENCES OF GREAT EVENTS (FROM BARBAROSSA TO DANTE) CHARLES F. HORNE It was during the period of about one hundred fifty years, extending from the middle of the twelfth to the close of the thirteenth century, that the features of our modern civilization began to assume a recognizable form. The age was characterized by the decline of feudalism, and by the... more...

CONVERSATION I. The rain came down in torrents, and beat violently against the parlour windows, whilst a keen autumnal blast made the children shiver, even by the side of a good fire. Their little hearts glowed with gratitude, when they reflected on their happy lot, sheltered from the bitter wind and driving sleet; and contrasted it with that of many miserable little beings, who were, no doubt,... more...