The Pioneer SteamshipSAVANNAH: A Study for a Scale Model The original plans of the pioneer transatlantic steamer Savannah no longer exist, and many popular representations of the famous vessel have been based on a 70-year-old model in the United States National Museum. This model, however, differs in several important respects from contemporary illustrations. To correct these apparent inaccuracies in a... more...

There is a room upstairs in the old house at Fruitlands in Harvard, Massachusetts, where the visitors pause and look about them with a softening glance and often with visible emotion, as though they felt a sudden nearness to something infinitely intimate and personal. They have come to see the place where Bronson Alcott and the group of transcendentalists cut themselves off from the world in the spring... more...

INTRODUCTORY. With my Aunt Tabithy. "Pshaw!" said my Aunt Tabithy, "have you not done with dreaming?" My Aunt Tabithy, though an excellent and most notable person, loves occasionally a quiet bit of satire. And when I told her that I was sharpening my pen for a new story of those dreamy fancies and half-experiences which lie grouped along the journeying hours of my solitary life, she... more...

SHORT STORY WRITING   some old belief vitalized by its bearing on our lives to-day, an analysis of an obscure calling, a glimpse at a forgotten quarter ... but one thing it can never be—it can never be 'a novel in a nutshell'." "A short story ... must lead up to something. It should have for its structure a plot, a bit of life, an incident such as you would find in a brief... more...

PROLOGUE [AFRICA AND HER SISTERS.] Some fifteen years now I have been her guest,For all this land's hers, tho' she does not reign.She's but a ward, at what late age she'll gainHer freedom and her kingdom, it were bestTo risk no surmise rash. E'en now she's drestSometimes in skins. Give her ground-nuts and grain,Cattle and thatch'd hut, then she'll not... more...

Kneel down and say:— In the presence of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen. Try to realize that you are in the presence of God, and then say:— Our Father, which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy Name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, As it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses, As we forgive them that trespass against us. And... more...

THE LONDON SUNDAY This seems to be a thing that all exclaim against, and but few see. The phrase is never varied—a sure sign of lack of experience. One cries, ‘Oh, the London Sunday!’ and another, ‘It must be too dreadful for foreigners!’ and before the topic disappears something yet vaguer has been said, in a flickering manner, as to the Boulevards. But in fact London Sunday is little... more...

CHAPTER I. THE LIBRARY I had just finished my studies at Oxford, and was taking a brief holiday from work before assuming definitely the management of the estate. My father died when I was yet a child; my mother followed him within a year; and I was nearly as much alone in the world as a man might find himself. I had made little acquaintance with the history of my ancestors. Almost the only thing I... more...

It has been my lot to have lived through the greater part of one of the most eventful centuries of England's history, and I have been thrown amongst most of the remarkable men of my day; whether soldiers, statesman, men of letters, theatrical people, or those whose birth and fortune—rather, perhaps, than their virtues or talents—have caused them to be conspicuous in society at home or abroad.... more...

t has been ten years since my uncle, Philip Westerly, disappeared. Many theories have been advanced as to why and how he vanished so strangely and so completely. Many have wondered why a man should vanish and leave nothing behind him but a smashed mirror. But none of these theories or wild imaginings are half so fantastic as the story I gathered from the diary which some whim prompted him to keep. But... more...