POTASH AND PERLMUTTER DISCUSS THE CZAR BUSINESS Like the human-hair business and the green-goods business it is not what it used to be. "Yes, Abe," Morris Perlmutter said to his partner, Abe Potash, as they sat in their office one morning in September, "the English language is practically a brand-new article since the time when I used to went to night school. In them days when a feller says... more...

CHAPTER ISMILING SILENCEEvening was in the wood, still as the dreaming bracken, secretive, moving softly among the pines as a young witch gathering simples. She wore a hood of finely woven shadows, yet, though she drew it close, sunbeams trooping westward flashed strange lights across her haunted face. The birds that lived in the wood had broken out into sudden singing as she stole in, hungry for... more...

ark knew he shouldn't stop. He was already late for Jennette's birthday party, but the sight of three people out in the open like this was too much. He pulled around and hovered over the undulating flow of glassy magma, frozen on its way to the long, dry Potomac river bed, with its shallow caverns and fascinating mile-wide potholes. Just under an overhanging cliff of half-vitrified soil were... more...

INTRODUCTION. It has been claimed for James Barron Hope that he was "Virginia's Laureate." He did not deal in "abstractions, or generalized arguments," or vague mysticisms. He fired the imagination purely, he awoke lofty thoughts and presented, through his noble odes that which is the soul of "every true poem, a living succession of concrete images and pictures." James... more...

CHAPTER I. THE SETTING FORTH. A voyage across the Atlantic Ocean in the year 1799 was not the every-day affair that it has come to be at the present time. There were no "ocean greyhounds" then. The passage was a long and trying one in the clumsy craft of those days, and people looked upon it as a more serious affair than they now do on a tour round the world. In the year 1799 few people thought... more...

THE WRECK. llie had been swinging for nearly an hour in the grove behind the old farm-house, when she heard her mother's voice calling, "Ollie, Ollie! where are you, child?" Ollie stopped swinging and listened. "That is mamma," she said; "I must run quickly and see what she wants." So, jumping down and leaving the swing to "die away" by itself, she skipped along the... more...

THOMAS PAINE, in his Will, speaks of this work as The American Crisis, remembering perhaps that a number of political pamphlets had appeared in London, 1775-1776, under general title of "The Crisis." By the blunder of an early English publisher of Paine's writings, one essay in the London "Crisis" was attributed to Paine, and the error has continued to cause confusion. This... more...

CHAPTER I An establishment in Newbern Center, trading under the name of the Foto Art Shop, once displayed in its window a likeness of the twin sons of Dave Cowan. Side by side, on a lavishly fringed plush couch, they confronted the camera with differing aspects. One sat forward with a decently, even blandly, composed visage, nor had he meddled with his curls. His mate sat back, scowling, and fought the... more...

CHAPTER I WHAT IS A PHOTOPLAY? As its title indicates, this book aims to teach the theory and practice of photoplay construction. This we shall attempt by first pointing out its component parts, and then showing how these parts are both constructed and assembled so as to form a strong, well-built, attractive and salable manuscript. The Photoplay Defined and Differentiated A photoplay is a story told... more...

ITS OBJECT The desire to write for publication is one which inheres strongly in every human breast. From the proficient college graduate, storming the gates of the high-grade literary magazines, to the raw schoolboy, vainly endeavoring to place his first crude compositions in the local newspapers, the whole intelligent public are today seeking expression through the printed page, and yearning to behold... more...