CHAPTER I Fog. A London fog, solid, substantial, yellow as an old dog's tooth or a jaundiced eye. You could not look through it, nor yet gaze up and down it, nor over it; and you only thought you saw it. The eye became impotent, untrustworthy; all senses lay fallow except that of touch; the skin alone conveyed to you with promptness and no incertitude that this thing had substance. You could feel... more...

"What I should like to know," Professor Bernardi said, gazing pensively after the lizard-man as he bore the shrieking form of Miss Anspacher off in his scaly arms, "is whether he is planning to eat her or make love to her. Because, in the latter instance, I'm not sure we should interfere. It may be her only chance." "Carl!" his wife cried indignantly. "That's a... more...

CHAPTER I ~ "CHINKIE'S FLAT" "Chinkie's Flat," In its decadence, was generally spoken of, by the passing traveller, as a "God-forsaken hole," and it certainly did present a repellent appearance when seen for the first time, gasping under the torrid rays of a North Queensland sun, which had dried up every green thing except the silver-leaved ironbarks, and the long,... more...

Daisy Hanbury poked her parasol between the bars of the cage, with the amiable intention of scratching the tiger's back. The tiger could not be expected to know this all by himself, and so he savagely bit the end of it off, with diabolical snarlings. Daisy turned to her cousin with a glow of sympathetic pleasure. "What a darling!" she said. "He didn't understand, you see, and was... more...

SAINTS WHO HAVE HAD BODIES. All doubtless remember the story which is told of the witty Charles II. and the Royal Society: How one day the King brought to the attention of its members a most curious and inexplicable phenomenon, which he stated thus: "When you put a trout into a pail full of water, why does not the water overflow?" The savans, naturally enough, were surprised, and suggested many... more...

"I have here attempted," said Roderick, unfolding a few sheets of manuscript, as he sat with Rosina and the sculptor in the summer-house,—"I have attempted to seize hold of a personage who glides past me, occasionally, in my walk through life. My former sad experience, as you know, has gifted me with some degree of insight into the gloomy mysteries of the human heart, through which I... more...

CHAPTER I THE PACIFIC COAST IN 1845—SPEECHES OF SENATOR BENTON AND REPORT OF CAPT. FRÉMONT—MY FATHER AND HIS FAMILY—INTEREST AWAKENED IN THE NEW TERRITORY—FORMATION OF THE FIRST EMIGRANT PARTY FROM ILLINOIS TO CALIFORNIA—PREPARATIONS FOR THE JOURNEY—THE START—ON THE OUTSKIRTS OF CIVILIZATION. Prior to the year 1845, that great domain lying west of the Rocky Mountains and extending to the... more...

I THE OPEN DOOR. I took the house of Brentwood on my return from India in 18—, for the temporary accommodation of my family, until I could find a permanent home for them. It had many advantages which made it peculiarly appropriate. It was within reach of Edinburgh; and my boy Roland, whose education had been considerably neglected, could go in and out to school; which was thought to be... more...

Act I. Scene: Denham's Studio. Large highlight window in sloping roof at back. Under it, in back wall, door to landing. l of the door the corner is curtained off for model's dressing-room. r of door a large Spanish leather folding screen, which runs on castors, shuts off from the door the other corner, in which is a "throne," pushed up against the wall. Above the "throne"... more...

In 1821, as a contribution to a periodical work—in 1822, as a separate volume—appeared the "Confessions of an English Opium-Eater." The object of that work was to reveal something of the grandeur which belongs potentially to human dreams. Whatever may be the number of those in whom this faculty of dreaming splendidly can be supposed to lurk, there are not perhaps very many in whom it is... more...