DON RECEIVES A JOLT Before beginning to read the interesting document in front of him, Jonas Barton, senior member of Barton & Saltonstall, paused to clean his glasses rather carefully, in order to gain sufficient time to study for a moment the tall, good-looking young man who waited indifferently on the other side of the desk. He had not seen his late client’s son since the latter had entered... more...

I first met John M. Synge at the room of a common friend, up two pairs of stairs, in an old house in Bloomsbury, on a Monday night of January, 1903. When I entered the room, he was sitting in a rush-bottomed chair, talking to a young man just down from Oxford. My host introduced me, with the remark that he wanted us to know each other. Synge stood up to shake hands with me. He was of the middle height,... more...

Chapter I. In 1670 Charles II granted to the Hudson's Bay Company a Charter of Incorporation, His Majesty delegating to the Company actual sovereignty over a very large portion of British North America, and assigning to them the exclusive monopoly of trade and mining in the territory. Writing in 1869, Mr. William Forsyth, , says:—"I have endeavoured to give an account of the constitution and... more...

Preface During the three years or more covered in this volume (1599-1602), the most notable occurrence is the coming to the archipelago (in 1600) of the fleet commanded by the Dutch adventurer Oliver van Noordt, bent on plunder and the damage of the Spanish settlements there: but he is defeated and driven away, although with heavy loss to the Spaniards. This event, with the quarrels which it arouses in... more...

CHAPTER I It was night in St. Petersburg. The moon was high in the heavens, and the domes, crowned with a fresh diadem of snow, glittered with a dazzling whiteness. In the side streets the shadows were heavy, the façades of the great palaces casting strange and dark reflections upon the pavement; but the main thoroughfares were streaked as with silver, while along the quay all was bright and luminous... more...

He began by breaking things that morning. He broke the glass of water on his night stand. He knocked it crazily against the opposite wall and shattered it. Yet it shattered slowly. This would have surprised him if he had been fully awake, for he had only reached out sleepily for it. Nor had he wakened regularly to his alarm; he had wakened to a weird, slow, low booming, yet the clock said six, time for... more...

CHAPTER I Jill looked at the East! At her feet sat huddled groups of women, just bundles of black robes, some with discs about their necks, some with chains or golden crescents upon the forehead, all wearing the burko [yashmak or face veil] covering the entire face with the exception of the eyes, and held in position between the eyebrows by the quaint tube-shaped selva, fastening it to the tarhah, the... more...

INTRODUCTION. WHAT SOME OF THE BUILDERS HAVE THOUGHT. A word oft-times is expressive of an entire policy. Such is the term Abolition. Though formerly used as a synonym of Anti-Slavery, people now clearly understand that the designs of those who have ranged themselves under the first of these systems of reform are of deeper significance and wider scope than are the objects contemplated by the latter,... more...

ACT I. SCENE I.——ARGAN (sitting at a table, adding up his apothecary's bill with counters). Arg. Three and two make five, and five make ten, and ten make twenty. "Item, on the 24th, a small, insinuative clyster, preparative and gentle, to soften, moisten, and refresh the bowels of Mr. Argan." What I like about Mr. Fleurant, my apothecary, is that his bills are always civil. "The... more...

PROLOGUE n the edge of a green plain around which rise the first steps of the immense amphitheatre of the Alps, a little castled city enthroned on a solitary hill watches since a thousand years the eternal and surpassing spectacle. Around its feet a river runs, a silver girdle bending northward between pastures green, while eastward over the towering azure heights the sunrise waves its flags of rose... more...