THE EPISODE OF THE MEXICAN SEER My name is Seymour Wilbraham Wentworth. I am brother-in-law and secretary to Sir Charles Vandrift, the South African millionaire and famous financier. Many years ago, when Charlie Vandrift was a small lawyer in Cape Town, I had the (qualified) good fortune to marry his sister. Much later, when the Vandrift estate and farm near Kimberley developed by degrees into the... more...

How many of us inwardly feel a secret longing to find God; and this usually accompanied by the perception that we are confronted by an impenetrable barrier—we cannot find Him—we can neither go through this barrier nor climb over it! We have faith. We are able to admit that He exists, for we cannot help but perceive a Will dominating the laws of the Universe; but something deep within us that we... more...

ABOUT HELL.   An item is going the rounds of the papers, to illustrate how large the sun is, and how hot it is, which asserts that if an icicle a million miles long, and a hundred thousand miles through, should be thrust into one of the burning cavities of the sun, it would be melted in the hundredth part of a second, and that it would not cause as much “sissing” as a drop of water on a hot... more...

CHAPTER I. JASPER'S VICTORY. A dozen boys were playing ball in a field adjoining the boarding-school of Dr. Pericles Benton, in the town of Walltham, a hundred and twenty-five miles northeast of the city of New York. These boys varied in age from thirteen to seventeen. In another part of the field a few younger boys were amusing themselves. All these boys were boarding-scholars connected with the... more...

You who know something of the irony of life in general, and still more of it in the present particular, will not be surprised that, having made two strict rules for my guidance in the writing of this book, I break them both in the first page! Indeed, I can hear you say, though without any touch of the satirical, that it was only natural that I should do so. The first of my two rules, heartily approved... more...

GEORGE and WILLIAM HOPE were the only children of a gentleman of fortune, who lived in a fine house at the entrance of a pretty village in Berkshire. It was this worthy gentleman’s misfortune to be the father of two very perverse and disobedient sons; who, instead of trying to please him by dutiful and obliging conduct, grieved him continually by their unworthy behaviour, and then were so wicked as... more...

CHAPTER I. The time of my departure from Castile, and what further happened to me. In the year 1514 I departed from Castile in the suite of Pedro Arias de Avila, who had just then been appointed governor of Terra Firma. At sea we had sometimes bad and sometimes good weather, until we arrived at Nombre Dios, where the plague was raging: of this we lost many of our men, and most of us got terrible sores... more...

CHAPTER I ON THE BLIND SIDE OF CHANCE Allen Drew, glancing carelessly about as he started for the shore-end of the pier, suddenly saw the girl coming in his direction. From that moment—dating from the shock of that first glimpse of her—the current of his life was changed. Women were rare enough down here on the East River docks; one of the type of this gloriously beautiful girl seemed an... more...

J. R. Alcorn collected a number of pocket gophers of the genus Pappogeomys in the states of Jalisco, Nayarit, and Colima. The bulk of this material was obtained in 1949 and 1950. Full treatment of these interesting pocket gophers will be given by the author in a future publication. Among the Pappogeomys collected by Alcorn were three specimens from the high Sierra del Tigre, an isolated range not... more...

YOUNG SWAIGDERorTHE FORCE OF RUNES It was the young Swaigder,   With the little ball he played;The ball flew into the Damsel’s lap,   And pale her cheeks it made. The ball flew into the Damsel’s bower.   He went of it in quest;Before he out of the bower came,   Much care had filled his breast! “The ball, the ball thou shouldst not fling,   Shouldst cast it not at me;There sits a maid in... more...