INTRODUCTION A Vindication of the Press is one of Defoe's most characteristic pamphlets and for this reason as well as for its rarity deserves reprinting. Besides the New York Public Library copy, here reproduced, I know of but one copy, which is in the Indiana University Library. Neither the Bodleian nor the British Museum has a copy. Like many items in the Defoe canon, this tract must be... more...

THE BEGINNING Kenneth Gwynne was five years old when his father ran away withRachel Carter, a widow. This was in the spring of 1812, and inthe fall his mother died. His grandparents brought him up to hateRachel Carter, an evil woman. She was his mother's friend and she had slain her with the viper's tooth. From the day that his questioning intelligence seized upon the truth that had been so... more...

VIOLETS. I. "And she tied a bunch of violets with a tress of her pretty brown hair." She sat in the yellow glow of the lamplight softly humming these words. It was Easter evening, and the newly risen spring world was slowly sinking to a gentle, rosy, opalescent slumber, sweetly tired of the joy which had pervaded it all day. For in the dawn of the perfect morn, it had arisen, stretched out its... more...

PREFACE This volume is the result of some studies that I felt impelled to make when, about three years ago, certain sections of the labor movement in the United States were discussing vehemently political action versus direct action. A number of causes combined to produce a serious and critical controversy. The Industrial Workers of the World were carrying on a lively agitation that later culminated in... more...

THE CHRISTIAN TRADITION I will therefore, without any further preface, plunge into the middle of the subject, and ask you, first of all, to consider afresh that 'throughout the Church the statement of the belief in the Virgin-Birth had its place from so early a date, and is traceable along so many different lines of evidence, as to force upon us the conclusion that, before the death of the last... more...

CHAPTER I THE SYSTEM Toward the close of a May afternoon in the year 1884, Miss Priscilla Batte, having learned by heart the lesson in physical geography she would teach her senior class on the morrow, stood feeding her canary on the little square porch of the Dinwiddie Academy for Young Ladies. The day had been hot, and the fitful wind, which had risen in the direction of the river, was just beginning... more...

THE JOY OF ANTICIPATION Elk Creek Valley was a blue and golden place that mid-summer morning in the Big Horn Country. It seemed like a joyous secret tucked away among the mountains, whose hazy, far-away summits were as blue as the sky above them. The lower ranges, too, were blue from purple haze and gray-green sagebrush, while the bare, brown foot-hills tumbling about their feet were golden in the... more...

I. A CONFESSION OF FAITH. The Circus in Rome was thronged with an enormous crowd of persons on a day in June, about two thousand years ago. One hundred thousand men and women sat on its tiers of white marble seats, under the open sky and witnessed a gladiatorial contest in the arena, beneath. At the western end of the oval amphitheatre was the Emperor's box, flanked with tall Corinthian pillars,... more...

LIFE OF LOWELL In Cambridge there are two literary shrines to which visitors are sure to find their way soon after passing the Harvard gates, "Craigie House," the home of Longfellow and "Elmwood," the home of Lowell. Though their hallowed retirement has been profaned by the encroachments of the growing city, yet in their simple dignity these fine old colonial mansions still bespeak the... more...

"But I know what I need. I need you." There was a dogged tone in Elijah Berl's voice that was almost sullenly insistent. "I have given you all that I have to give, Elijah. You don't need me. What you need is money, and that's what I haven't got." "And I say again that I have thought of this for five years. Ever since I left New England. I have not been alone, I... more...