INTRODUCTION. Joseph Butler was born in 1692, youngest of eight children of a linendraper at Wantage, in Berkshire.  His father was a Presbyterian, and after education at the Wantage Free Grammar School Joseph Butler was sent to be educated for the Presbyterian ministry in a training academy at Gloucester, which was afterwards removed to Tewkesbury.  There he had a friend and comrade, Secker, who... more...

PREFACE My dear Boys:—The sea stretches away from the land,—a vast sheet of unknown possibilities. Now gray, now blue, now slate colored, whipped into a thousand windrows by the storm, churned into a seething mass of frothing spume and careening bubbles, it pleases, lulls, then terrorizes and dismays. Perpetually intervening as a barrier between peoples and their countries, the wild, sobbing ocean... more...

CHAPTER I. It was either very careless or very astute of Nature to leave the entire length of the American continent without a central passage from ocean to ocean, or, having provided such a passage at Nicaragua, to allow it to be obstructed again by volcanic action. This imperviousness of the long American barrier had, as we shall see, important economic and political results, and the eventual opening... more...

CHAPTER I THE GET TOGETHER. The late September day waved back at Summer graceful as a child saying goodbye with a soft dimply hand; and just as fitful were the gleams of warm sunshine that lazed through the stately trees on the broad campus of Wellington College. It was a brave day—Summer defying Nature, swishing her silken skirts of transparent iridescence into the leaves already trembling before... more...

CHAPTER I. "A fair day's business. A very fair day's business," said Leonard Jasper, as he closed a small account-book, over which he had been poring, pencil in hand, for some ten minutes. The tone in which he spoke expressed more than ordinary gratification. "To what do the sales amount?" asked a young man, clerk to the dealer, approaching his principal as he spoke. "To... more...

I. SUCCESS. [Published in "A Masque of Poets"at the request of "H.H.," the author'sfellow-townswoman and friend.] Success is counted sweetestBy those who ne'er succeed.To comprehend a nectarRequires sorest need. Not one of all the purple hostWho took the flag to-dayCan tell the definition,So clear, of victory, As he, defeated, dying,On whose forbidden earThe distant strains of... more...

Well, but some one will say to me, this design of making a man's self the subject of his writing, were indeed excusable in rare and famous men, who by their reputation had given others a curiosity to be fully informed of them. It is most true, I confess and know very well, that a mechanic will scarce lift his eyes from his work to look at an ordinary man, whereas a man will forsake his business... more...

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AMONG THE HILLS There were three at the breakfast-table—Mr. Newthorpe, his daughter Annabel, and their visitor (Annabel's Cousin), Miss Paula Tyrrell. It was a small, low, soberly-furnished room, the walls covered with carelessly-hung etchings and water-colours, and with photographs which were doubtless mementoes of travel; dwarf bookcases held overflowings from the library; volumes in disorder,... more...

On Board the “Kestrel.” Morning on board the Kestrel, his Britannic majesty’s cutter, lying on and off the south coast on the lookout for larks, or what were to her the dainty little birds that the little falcon, her namesake, would pick up. For the Kestrel’s wings were widespread to the soft south-easterly breeze that barely rippled the water; and mainsail, gaff topsail, staysail, and jib were... more...