ON THE STREETS OF ANTWERP. “Good-bye, Elmer, and you, too, Rooster!” “It’s too bad we have to hurry home, and break up the Big Five Motorcycle Boys’ combination, just when we’ve been having such royal good times over in the country of the Great War!” “But there was nothing else to do, Elmer, when you got that cable message telling you to take the first steamer home, as your mother was... more...

INTRODUCTION A person standing on the North Rim of the Mesa Verde in southwestern Colorado sees a vast green plain sloping away to the south. The plain drops 2000 feet in ten miles. On a clear evening, before the sun reaches the horizon, the rays of the sun are reflected from great sandstone cliffs forming the walls of deep canyons that appear as crooked yellow lines in the distance. Canyon after... more...

CHARIVARIA. According to The Evening News, lambs have already put in an appearance in Dorset. People who expect the Poet Laureate to rush to the spot will be bitterly disappointed. "What was a golden eagle doing in Lincolnshire?" asks "L.G.M." in The Daily Mail. We never answer these personal questions. The Public Libraries Committee of West Ham has declined to purchase The... more...

THE JEWS AND THE ROMANS The life and works of Flavius Josephus are bound up with the struggle of the Jews against the Romans, and in order to appreciate them it is necessary to summarize the relations of the two peoples that led up to that struggle. It is related in the Midrash that the city of Rome was founded on the day Solomon married an Egyptian princess. The Rabbis doubtless meant by this legend... more...

PART 1. Nec tantum prodere vati,Quantum scire licet. Venit aetas omnis in unamCongeriem, miserumque premunt tot saecula pectus.LUCAN, Phars. v. 176. How wonderful is Death,Death and his brother Sleep!One pale as yonder wan and horned moon,With lips of lurid blue,The other glowing like the vital morn, 5When throned on ocean's waveIt breathes over the world:Yet both so passing strange and wonderful!... more...

his news," said Cliff Hynes, pointing to the newspaper, "means the end of homo Americanus."Out of the Antarctic it came—a wall of viscid, grey, half-human jelly, absorbing and destroying all life that it encountered.The newspaper in question was the hour-sheet of the International Broadcast Association, just delivered by pneumatic tube at the laboratory. It was stamped 1961, Month 13, Day... more...

POEMS BY ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON AUTUMN FIRES In the other gardens  And all up the vale,From the autumn bonfires  See the smoke trail! Pleasant summer over  And all the summer flowers;The red fire blazes,  The grey smoke towers. Sing a song of seasons!  Something bright in all!Flowers in the summer,  Fires in the fall! THE UNSEEN PLAYMATE When children are playing alone on the green,In comes... more...

HIS LIGHT Gray mist on the sea,And the night coming down,She stays with sorrowIn a far town. He goes the sea-waysBy channel lights dim,Her love, a true light,Watches for him. They would be weddedOn a fair yesterday,But the quick regimentSaw him away. Gray mist in her eyesAnd the night coming down:He feels a prayerFrom a far town. He goes the sea-ways,The land lights are dim;She and an altar lightKeep... more...

The author of Lavengro, the Scholar, the Gypsy, and the Priest has after his fitful hour come into his own, and there abides securely.  Borrow’s books,—carelessly written, impatient, petulant, in parts repellant,—have been found so full of the elixir of life, of the charm of existence, of the glory of motion, so instinct with character, and mood, and wayward fancy, that their very names are... more...

The Adventure of a Kite. ne evening, when Mary, her mamma, and Willie had all taken their seats near the window, and the story was about to begin, Mary reminded her mamma of a merry adventure that she had mentioned as having happened when she and her brother and Master White went out to fly their "new Kite." "Do, mamma, tell us about that," said Mary. Her mamma said she would, and after... more...