PREVIOUS EVENTS WHICH LED TO THE ASSAULT. There are few communities, however small, that have not been aroused and stirred into action, by some uncommon event, or where opposing parties have never rejoiced, and mourned over a triumph of one at the other's expense, and often have men and women, unappreciated by the many, bravely suffered for their fidelity to a good and beloved cause. Thus the... more...

PREFACE The three lectures collected in this volume were prepared without any intention of publication. They were delivered for the purpose of drawing attention to the links which connect the proposal for a League of Nations with the past, to the difficulties which stand in the way of the realisation of the proposal, and to some schemes by which these difficulties might be overcome. When it was... more...

EXPERIENCE (By way of Preface) Of these sketches that tell of ruined Belgium, I must say that I saw what I have told of. They are not meditations in a library. Because of the great courtesy of the Prime Minister of Belgium, who is the war minister, and through the daily companionship of his son, our little group of helpers were permitted to go where no one else could go, to pass in under shell fire, to... more...

CONCERNING THE PARSON'S CHOICE BETWEEN TOWN AND COUNTRY. One very happy circumstance in a clergyman's lot, is that he is saved from painful perplexity as regards his choice of the scene in which he is to spend his days and years. I am sorry for the man who returns from Australia with a large fortune; and with no further end in life than to settle down somewhere and enjoy it. For in most cases... more...

INTRODUCTION Lafcadio Hearn, known to Nippon as Yakumo Koizumi, was born in Leucadia in the Ionian Islands, June 27, 1850. His father was an Irish surgeon in the British Army; his mother was a Greek. Both parents died while Hearn was still a child, and he was adopted by a great-aunt, and educated for the priesthood. To this training he owed his Latin scholarship and, doubtless, something of the... more...

INTRODUCTION We know, both by tradition and published records, that from the earliest times the faint grey and light spots which diversify the face of our satellite excited the wonder and stimulated the curiosity of mankind, giving rise to suppositions more or less crude and erroneous as to their actual nature and significance. It is true that Anaxagoras, five centuries before our era, and probably... more...

LAKE OF TACARIGUA. HOT SPRINGS OF MARIARA. TOWN OF NUEVA VALENCIA DEL REY. DESCENT TOWARDS THE COASTS OF PORTO CABELLO. The valleys of Aragua form a narrow basin between granitic and calcareous mountains of unequal height. On the north, they are separated by the Sierra Mariara from the sea-coast; and towards the south, the chain of Guacimo and Yusma serves them as a rampart against the heated air of... more...

Not far from Westminster Abbey, as most of our readers know well, stands the gorgeous pile which Mr. Barry has designed, and for which, in a pecuniary sense, a patient public has been rather handsomely bled.  Few are there who have looked at that pile from the Bridge—or from the numerous steamers which throng the river—or loitered round it on a summer’s eve, without feeling some little reverence... more...

APPARATUS 1. 1. Carbon-Zinc Cell. Fig. 1. If you have some rubber bands you can quickly make a cell out of rods of zinc and carbon. The rods are kept apart by putting a band, B, around each end of both rods. The bare wires are pinched under the upper bands. The whole is then bound together by means of the bands, A, and placed in a tumbler of fluid, as given in . This method does not make first-class... more...

THE LADY OF THE BARGE The master of the barge Arabella sat in the stern of his craft with his right arm leaning on the tiller. A desultory conversation with the mate of a schooner, who was hanging over the side of his craft a few yards off, had come to a conclusion owing to a difference of opinion on the subject of religion. The skipper had argued so warmly that he almost fancied he must have inherited... more...