INTRODUCTION THE first three numbers in this collection are tales of the White Hills in New Hampshire. The passages from Sketches from Memory show that Hawthorne had visited the mountains in one of his occasional rambles from home, but there are no entries in his Note Books which give accounts of such a visit. There is, however, among these notes the following interesting paragraph, written in 1840 and... more...

LAFE JOHNSON ARRIVES AT THE LAZY L RANCH It may come as a shock to many to learn that we have in cowland a considerable number of full-blooded men who have never made it a practice to step outside the door of a morning and shoot a fellow-citizen before breakfast. This is true; vital statistics and fiction to the contrary, notwithstanding. They are well-grown, two-fisted men, also, and work very hard... more...

The Palace of the Eagles East of the Land of the Rising Sun there dwelled a king who spent all his days and half his nights in pleasure. His kingdom was on the edge of the world, according to the knowledge of those times, and almost entirely surrounded by the sea. Nobody seemed to care what lay beyond the barrier of rocks that shut off the land from the rest of the world. For the matter of that, nobody... more...

THE PORTENT The hot weather had come suddenly, at least a month earlier than usual, and New York lay baking under a scorching sun when Miss Hetty Torrance sat in the coolest corner of the Grand Central Depot she could find. It was by her own wish she had spent the afternoon in the city unattended, for Miss Torrance was a self-reliant young woman; but it was fate and the irregularity of the little gold... more...

October 7, 1914. General Villa has now declared war on President Carranza. Everybody's doing it. Is there, we wonder, a single unfair weapon which the Germans have not used? It is now said that not infrequently a German band is made to play when the enemy's infantry advances to attack. A regrettable mistake is reported from South London. A thoroughly patriotic man was sat upon by a Cockney... more...

CHAPTER I The lights shining through the rain on the smooth street made of it a golden river. The shabby old gentleman navigated unsteadily until he came to a corner. A lamp-post offered safe harbor. He steered for it and took his bearings. On each side of the glimmering stream loomed dark houses. A shadowy blot on the triangle he knew to be a church. Beyond the church was the intersecting avenue. Down... more...

I.   The Beautiful is one of the immortal themes. It cannot die; it grows not old. On the same day with the sun was beauty born, and its life runs parallel with the path of that great beautifier. As a subject for exposition, it is at once easy and difficult: easy, from the affluence of its resources; difficult, from the exactions which its own spirit makes in the use of them. Beauty—what is it? To... more...

PREFACE In the beginning was the land. It drew human life to our rich area of Fairfax County, and sustained us for centuries before we became so self-conscious about it as to make household language of words such as ecology and bio-degradable waste. This is where we are at, however, and thus it is thoroughly appropriate that the publication of historical research reports in this format, a new program... more...

Some men deliberately don a character in early youth as others don a mask before going to an opera ball. They select it not without some care, being guided in their choice by the opinion they have formed of the world's mind and manner of proceeding. In the privacy of the dressing-room, the candles being lighted and the mirror adjusted at the best angle for a view of self, they assume their... more...

MOONLIGHT ON THE RIO GILA. Along the eastern bank a small Indian canoe, containing a single individual, was stealing its way—"hugging" the shore so as to take advantage of the narrow band of shadow that followed the winding of the stream. There were no trees on either side of the river, but this portion was walled in by bluffs, rising from three or four to fully twenty feet in height. The... more...