MOUNTAIN-TOPSFrères de l'aigle! Aimez la montagne sauvage!Surtout à ces moments où vient un vent d'orage.Victor Hugo.I belong to the great and mystic brotherhood of mountain worshippers. We are a motley crowd drawn from all lands and all ages, and we are certainly a peculiar people. The sight and smell of the mountain affect us like nothing else on earth. In some of us they arouse... more...

ITHE DISCOVERY My Dear Jane, You remember that you were puzzled when I told you I had heard something from the owls—or if not puzzled (for I know you have some experience of these things), you were at any rate anxious to know exactly how it happened. Perhaps the time has now come for you to be told. It was really luck, and not any skill of mine, that put me in the way of it; luck, and also being... more...

CHAPTER I The topography of a country is to some extent a prophecy of its future. Had there been no Mississippi coursing for three thousand miles through the North American Continent, no Ohio and Missouri bisecting it from east to west, no great inland seas indenting and watering it, no fertile prairies stretching across its vast areas, how different would have been the history of our own land. Russia... more...

PREFACE TO THE LIVES I am aware that it is commonly held as a fact by most writers that sculpture, as well as painting, was naturally discovered originally by the people of Egypt, and also that there are others who attribute to the Chaldeans the first rough carvings of statues and the first reliefs. In like manner there are those who credit the Greeks with the invention of the brush and of colouring.... more...

THE THIRD OF JULY "You can't go in that room." "Why can't I?" "Because that's the orders; and you can't smoke in this room." Bart Stirling spoke in a definite, manly fashion. Lemuel Wacker dropped his hand from the door knob on which it rested, and put his pipe in his pocket, but his shoulders hunched up and his unpleasant face began to scowl. "Ho!"... more...

JANUARY 1660-1661 1660-61. At the end of the last and the beginning of this year, I do live in one of the houses belonging to the Navy Office, as one of the principal officers, and have done now about half a year. After much trouble with workmen I am now almost settled; my family being, myself, my wife, Jane, Will. Hewer, and Wayneman,—[Will Wayneman appears by this to have been forgiven for his... more...

Isle of Skye, 1 Jan 2149 CE It was just past midnight when the woman in wet, torn forest green saw what had to be the light from windows of a small house. She stumbled toward it gratefully, hoping for warmth and some sort of communications. Dammit, equipment failure and a plane crash were no way to start New Year's Day! As she neared the house, she heard party sounds, and grinned. It seemed that... more...

CHAPTER IWhat defense could she raise against mutant science—telepathy, invisibility, teleportation—especially since Earth was not aware of its danger!When Julia (she pronounced the name without the "a" at the end) was twenty-four, she inherited $22,000 from an obscure uncle in California. After deducting taxes and administrative expenses, the California State Court ordered the money... more...

It is an usual and a commendable practice to preface the discussion of the views of a philosophic thinker by some account of the man and of the circumstances which shaped his life and coloured his way of looking at things; but, though Zadig is cited in one of the most important chapters of Cuvier's greatest work, little is known about him, and that little might perhaps be better authenticated than... more...

CHAPTER I. THE WAR IN THE NORTHWEST, 1777-1778. The Tribes Hold Councils at Detroit. In the fall of 1776 it became evident that a formidable Indian war was impending. At Detroit great councils were held by all the northwestern tribes, to whom the Six Nations sent the white belt of peace, that they might cease their feuds and join against the Americans. The later councils were summoned by Henry... more...