CHAPTER I. THE LETTER.   Katie Clifford sat on the floor, in the sun, feeding her white mice. She had a tea-spoon and a cup of bread and milk in her hands. If she had been their own mother she could not have smiled down on the little creatures more sweetly. "'Cause I spect they's hungry, and that's why I'm goin' to give 'em sumpin' to eat. Shut your moufs and... more...

CHAPTER I The Last Night of Carnival It was Carnival time in the ancient and once imperial, but now provincial and remote, city of Ravenna. It was Carnival time, and the very acme and high-tide of that season of mirth and revel. For the theory of Carnival observance is, that the life of it, unlike that of most other things and beings, is intensified with a constantly crescendo movement up to the last... more...

CRITICISM EVANGELINE A review of Mr. Longfellow's poem. EUREKA! Here, then, we have it at last,—an American poem, with the lack of which British reviewers have so long reproached us. Selecting the subject of all others best calculated for his purpose,—the expulsion of the French settlers of Acadie from their quiet and pleasant homes around the Basin of Minas, one of the most sadly romantic... more...

THE SLAVER.   On the 18th day of February 1850, Her Majesty's steamship Rattler was lying at anchor about twenty miles to the northward of Ambriz, a slave depôt situated on the western coast of Africa. Week after week had passed away in dull uniformity; while the oppressive heat, the gentle breeze which scarcely ruffled the surface of the deep, and the lazy motion of the vessel as it rolled on... more...

PREFACE John Baptist Jackson has received little recognition as an artist. This is not surprising if we remember that originality in a woodcutter was not considered a virtue until quite recently. We can now see that he was more important than earlier critics had realized. He was the most adventurous and ambitious of earlier woodcutters and a trailblazer in turning his art resolutely in the direction of... more...

JOSEPH BRANT—THAYENDANEGEA. Few tasks are more difficult of accomplishment than the overturning of the ideas and prejudices which have been conceived in our youth, which have grown up with us to mature age, and which have finally become the settled convictions of our manhood. The overturning process is none the less difficult when, as is not seldom the case, those ideas and convictions are widely at... more...

Nobody’s Child. “Oh, how full of briars is this working-day world!”                 Shakspere. “It is so cold, Mother!” The woman addressed languidly roused herself from the half-sheltered nook of the forest in which she and her child had taken refuge. She was leaning with her back supported by a giant oak, and the child was in her arms. The age of the child was about eight.... more...

Captain Cook—His Life, Voyages, and Discoveries. Early Training. Among all those Englishmen who, from a humble origin, have risen to an honourable position, Captain James Cook is especially worthy of record. His parents were of the peasant class—his father having commenced life as a farm-labourer, and his mother being a cottager’s daughter. Probably, however, they were both superior to others of... more...

SUSSEX PLACE, REGENT'S PARK. Is said to have been erected from the designs of Mr. Nash, but is considered as one of the least successful of his productions. It was among the earliest of the terraces in the Park, and its whimsical contrast with the chaster beauties of the adjoining structures soon became the signal for critical pasquinade. It consists of an extensive range of residences, a centre... more...

Miller (Proc. Acad. Nat. Sci. Philadelphia, 1902, p. 390, September 3,1902) based the name Pipistrellus cinnamomeus on a skin and skull of a vespertilionid bat obtained on May 4, 1900, at Montecristo, Tabasco, Mexico, by E. W. Nelson and E. A. Goldman. A single specimen was available to Miller when he proposed the name P. cinnamomeus. Dalquest and Hall (Jour. Mamm., 29:180, May 14, 1948) reported three... more...