CHAPTER I The American yacht lying off the harbour at Yokohama was brilliantly lit from stem to stern. Between it and the shore the reflection of the full moon glittered on the water up to the steps of the big black landing-stage. The glamour of the eastern night and the moonlight combined to lend enchantment to a scene that by day is blatant and tawdry, and the countless coloured lamps twinkling along... more...

CHAPTER I The courtyard of the Hotel du Lac, furnished with half a dozen tables and chairs, a red and green parrot chained to a perch, and a shady little arbor covered with vines, is a pleasant enough place for morning coffee, but decidedly too sunny for afternoon tea. It was close upon four of a July day, when Gustavo, his inseparable napkin floating from his arm, emerged from the cool dark doorway of... more...

"Marriage is not an institution of nature. The family in the east is entirely different from the family in the west. Man is the servant of nature, and the institutions of society are grafts, not spontaneous growths of nature. Laws are made to suit manners, and manners vary. "Marriage must therefore undergo the gradual development towards perfection to which all human affairs submit." These... more...

On a dreary afternoon of November, when London was closely wrapped in a yellow fog, Hermione Lester was sitting by the fire in her house in Eaton Place reading a bundle of letters, which she had just taken out of her writing-table drawer. She was expecting a visit from the writer of the letters, Emile Artois, who had wired to her on the previous day that he was coming over from Paris by the night train... more...

CHAPTER I THE FIRST SEA FIGHT OF THE REVOLUTIONDOES it not seem an odd fact that little Rhode Island, the smallest of all our states, should have two capital cities, while all the others, some of which would make more than a thousand Rhode Islands, have only one apiece? It is like the old story of the dwarf beating the giants.The tale we have to tell has to do with these two cities, Providence and... more...

Historian of First New Jersey Brigade,Elizabeth, N. J. Dear Sir: In accordance with your request I give you herewith my recollections of the Battle of Gaines' Mills. In order to give a minute description of this battle, it may be well to describe where the New Jersey Brigade started from to go into it, and how it came to be where it did start from. The Brigade had been at the village of... more...

A great man's house is filled chiefly with menials and creatures of ceremony; and great libraries contain, for the most part, books as dry and lifeless as the dust that gathers on them: but from amidst these dead leaves an immortal mind here and there looks forth with light and love. From the point of view of the bank president, Emerson tells us, books are merely so much rubbish. But in his eyes... more...

I THE WORLD TRAGEDY We are living under the shadow of the greatest world tragedy in the history of mankind. Not even the overthrow of the old Roman empire was so colossal a disaster as this. Inevitably we are bewildered by it. Utterly unanticipated, at least in its world extent, for we had believed mankind too far advanced for such a chaos of brute force to recur, it overwhelms our vision. Man had been... more...

As one of the Guardian ships protecting Earth, the crew had a problem to solve. Just how do you protect a race from an enemy who can take over a man's mind without seeming effort or warning? "That hand didn't move, did it?" Edwardson asked, standing at the port, looking at the stars. "No," Morse said. He had been staring fixedly at the Attison Detector for over an hour. Now he... more...

SCENE A Lady, entering the florist's with her muff to her face, and fluttering gayly up to the counter, where the florist stands folding a mass of loose flowers in a roll of cotton batting: "Good-morning, Mr. Eichenlaub! Ah, put plenty of cotton round the poor things, if you don't want them frozen stiff! You have no idea what a day it is, here in your little tropic." She takes away... more...