CHAPTER I 1890 William II, the "Social Monarch"—What lies beneath his declared pacifism—His journey to Russia—The German Press invites us to forget our defeat and become reconciled while Germany is adding to her army every day. April 12, 1890. [1] What an all-pervading nuisance is William! To think of the burden that this one man has imposed upon the intelligence of humanity and the... more...

THE TORTOISE AND THE DUCKS "Take me with you, please," called a tortoise to a gray duck and a white duck that were flying over. The ducks heard the tortoise and flew down toward him. "Do you really wish to go with us?" asked the ducks as they came to the ground near the tortoise. "I surely do," replied the tortoise. "Will you please take me?" "Why, yes, I think we... more...

December 20, 1848 On Thursday, December 20, 1848, the Constituent Assembly, being in session, surrounded at that moment by an imposing display of troops, heard the report of the Representative Waldeck-Rousseau, read on behalf of the committee which had been appointed to scrutinize the votes in the election of President of the Republic; a report in which general attention had marked this phrase, which... more...

CHAPTER XXXI. There were two men in the company who caused me particular discomfort. One was a little Swede, about twenty-five years old, who knew only one song, and he was forever singing it. By day we were all crowded into one small, stifling bar-room, and so there was no escaping this person's music. Through all the profanity, whisky-guzzling, "old sledge" and quarreling, his monotonous... more...

CHAPTER I MOBILIZATION OF PUBLIC OPINION The Haupttelegraphenamt (the Chief Telegraph Office) in Berlin is the centre of the entire telegraph system of Germany. It is a large, brick building in the Franzoesischestrasse guarded, day and night, by soldiers. The sidewalks outside the building are barricaded. Without a pass no one can enter. Foreign correspondents in Berlin, when they had telegrams to send... more...

PREFACE. It is perhaps a matter rather for regret than for surprise that so few attempts have been made to describe, as a whole, the life and character of Henry VIII. No ruler has left a deeper impress on the history of his country, or done work which has been the subject of more keen and lasting contention. Courts of law are still debating the intention of statutes, the tenor of which he dictated; and... more...

MARY'S MEADOW. CHAPTER I. Mother is always trying to make us love our neighbors as ourselves. She does so despise us for greediness, or grudging, or snatching, or not sharing what we have got, or taking the best and leaving the rest, or helping ourselves first, or pushing forward, or praising Number One, or being Dogs in the Manger, or anything selfish. And we cannot bear her to despise us! We... more...

THE OLD STONE MILL There were two ways by which one could get to the Old Stone Mill. One, from the sideroad by a lane which, edged with grassy, flower-decked banks, wound between snake fences, along which straggled irregular clumps of hazel and blue beech, dogwood and thorn bushes, and beyond which stretched on one side fields of grain just heading out this bright June morning, and on the other side a... more...

Near the verge of a bold promontory stands the hotel, and looks southeastward over a sweep of sea unbroken to the horizon. Behind it stretches the vast forest, which after two hundred years has resumed the sterile coast wrested from it by the first Pilgrims, and has begun to efface the evidences of the inroad made in recent years by the bold speculator for whom Jocelyn's is named. The young... more...

HOW LIN McLEAN WENT EAST In the old days, the happy days, when Wyoming was a Territory with a future instead of a State with a past, and the unfenced cattle grazed upon her ranges by prosperous thousands, young Lin McLean awaked early one morning in cow camp, and lay staring out of his blankets upon the world. He would be twenty-two this week. He was the youngest cow-puncher in camp. But because he... more...