MY LADY OF THE CONSTELLATIONS Sylvia was reading in her grandfather's library when the bell tinkled. Professor Kelton had few callers, and as there was never any certainty that the maid-of-all-work would trouble herself to answer, Sylvia put down her book and went to the door. Very likely it was a student or a member of the faculty, and as her grandfather was not at home Sylvia was quite sure that... more...

AT PLAY. Three little foals you see at play.They romp and sport all through the day,But sometimes they are most sedateAnd try to ape their mothers’ gait. They wheel and race and leap and prance,And sometimes they are said to dance:But always they will stand and stareAt anyone who passes there.   [4] [5] [6] The horse, like us, must go to schoolTo learn by precept and by rule.Like us, he does not... more...

Chapter I A bright spring day was fading into evening. High overhead in the clear heavens small rosy clouds seemed hardly to move across the sky but to be sinking into its depths of blue. In a handsome house in one of the outlying streets of the government town of O—— (it was in the year 1842) two women were sitting at an open window; one was about fifty, the other an old lady of seventy. The name... more...

OVER THE WAY I had been living at Tunbridge Wells and nowhere else, going on for ten years, when my medical man—very clever in his profession, and the prettiest player I ever saw in my life of a hand at Long Whist, which was a noble and a princely game before Short was heard of—said to me, one day, as he sat feeling my pulse on the actual sofa which my poor dear sister Jane worked before her spine... more...

CHAPTER I: CHARON MAKES A DISCOVERY Charon, the Ferryman of renown, was cruising slowly along the Styx one pleasant Friday morning not long ago, and as he paddled idly on he chuckled mildly to himself as he thought of the monopoly in ferriage which in the course of years he had managed to build up. “It’s a great thing,” he said, with a smirk of satisfaction—“it’s a great thing to be the... more...

It is an August morning. It is an old English manor-house. There is a breakfast-room hung with old gilded leather of the times of the Stuarts; it has oak furniture of the same period; it has leaded lattices with stained glass in some of their frames, and the motto of the house in old French, "J'ay bon vouloir," emblazoned there with the crest of a heron resting in a crown. Thence, windows... more...

Half a Dozen Daughters. There were six of them altogether—six great big girls,—and they lived in a great big house, in the middle of a long high road, one end of which loses itself in London town, while the other goes stretching away over the county of Hertford. Years ago, John Gilpin had ridden his famous race down that very road, and Christabel loved to look out of her bedroom window and imagine... more...

CHAPTER I. A FLUTTER IN THE DOVE-COT. Is there any sensation equal to that produced by the first lover and the first proposal coming to a girl in a large family of girls? It is delightfully sentimental, comical, complimentary, affronting, rousing, tiresome—all in one. It is a herald of lovers, proposals, and wonderful changes all round. It is the first thrill of real life in its strong passions,... more...

“Arms and the man” was Virgil’s strain; But we propose in lighter vein To browse a crop from pastures (Green’s) Of England’s Evolution scenes. Who would from facts prognosticate The future progress of this State, Must own the chiefest fact to be Her escalator is the Sea.   HISTORIANS erudite and sage, When writing of the past stone age, Tell us man once was clothed in skins And tattooed... more...

Anecdote I. An elephant, from some motive of revenge, killed his cornack, or conductor. The man’s wife, who beheld the dreadful scene, took her two children, and threw them at the feet of the enraged animal, saying, “Since you have slain my husband, take my life also, as well as that of my children.” The elephant instantly stopped, relented, and as if stung with remorse, took up the eldest boy... more...