During fourteen years Hepworth Closs had been a wanderer over the earth. When he was carried out from the court-room after Mrs. Yates' confession of a crime which he had shrinkingly believed committed by another, he had fainted from the suddenness with which a terrible load had been lifted from his soul. In that old woman's guilt he had no share. It swept the blackness from the marriage he... more...

CHAPTER ONE AN UNEXPECTED LETTER Clearly engraved on the walls of my memory there still remains a picture of the great gray house where I spent my childhood. It was originally used for more than a hundred years as the convent of the "White Ladies", with its four long galleries, one above the other, looking proudly down upon the humbler dwellings of the village. On the side of the house, where... more...

Toadstools! “Oh, I say, here’s a game! What’s he up to now?” “Hi! Vane! Old weathercock! Hold hard!” “Do you hear? Which way does the wind blow?” Three salutations shouted at a lad of about sixteen, who had just shown himself at the edge of a wood on the sunny slope of the Southwolds, one glorious September morning, when the spider-webs were still glittering with iridescent colours, as... more...

                          DIARY OF SAMUEL PEPYS.                              JULY & AUGUST                                  1663 July 1st. This morning it rained so hard (though it was fair yesterday, and we thereupon in hopes of having some fair weather, which we have wanted these three months) that it... more...

WOMEN AND LITERATURE IN FRANCE. From a sprightly letter from Paris to the Cologne Gazette, we translate for The International the following account of the position of women in the French Republic, together with the accompanying gossip concerning sundry ladies whose names have long been quite prominently before the public: "It is curious that the idea of the emancipation of women should have... more...

CHAPTER I MAPPO AND THE COCOANUT Once upon a time, not so very many years ago, there lived in a tree, in a big woods, a little monkey boy. It was in a far-off country, where this little monkey lived, so far that you would have to travel many days in the steam cars, and in a steamship, to get there. The name of the little monkey boy was Mappo, and he had two brothers and two sisters, and also a papa and... more...

THE BATTLE OF CHATEAUGUAY.   The War of 1812 has been called by an able historian "the afterclap of the Revolution." The Revolution was, indeed, true thunder—a courageous and, in the main, high-principled struggle. Its afterclap of 1812 displayed little but empty bombast and greed. In the one, brave leaders risked their lives in that defence of rights which has made their enterprise an epoch... more...

CHAPTER I PLANS FOR THE HOLIDAYS "Where are you going to spend the holidays, Frank?" The speaker was Henri Martin, a French boy of the new type that has sprung up in France since games like football and tennis began to be generally encouraged. He asked the question of his schoolmate, Frank Barnes, son of a French mother and an American father. Frank's name was really Francois; his mother... more...

The bombardment of Antwerp began about ten o'clock on the evening of Wednesday, October 7. The first shell to fall within the city struck a house in the Berchem district, killing a fourteen-year-old boy and wounding his mother and little sister. The second decapitated a street-sweeper as he was running for shelter. Throughout the night the rain of death continued without cessation, the shells... more...

THE STORY OF THE ENCHANTED HORSE. The Nooroze, or the new day, which is the first of the year and spring, is observed as a solemn festival throughout all Persia, which has been continued from the time of idolatry; and our prophet's religion, pure as it is, and true as we hold it, has not been able to abolish that heathenish custom, and the superstitious ceremonies which are observed, not only in... more...