PREFATORY NOTE I “If Winter Comes” placed its author not only as a Best Seller, but as one of the Great Novelists of to-day. Not always are those royalties crowned by those laurels. Tarzan (of, if I remember rightly, the Apes) never won the double event. And I am told by superior people that, intellectually, Miss Ethel M. Dell takes the hindmost. Personally, I found “If Winter Comes” a most... more...

CHAPTER I ABOUT NOSES AND JAWS A foxhound scents the trail of his game and tracks it straight to a killing. A lapdog lacks this capability. In the same way, there are breeds of would-be writers who never can acquire a "nose for news," and others who, from the first day that they set foot in editorial rooms, are hot on the trail that leads to billboard headlines on the front page of a newspaper... more...

Old Martha wondered if the Poor Boy would have a smile for her. He had had so many in the old days, the baby days, the growing-up days, the college days, the "world so new and all" days. There were some which she would always remember. The smile he smiled one Christmas morning, when he put the grand fur coat around her shoulders, and the kiss on her cheek. The smile he smiled that day when they... more...

CHAPTER I Why Live in the Country? The urge to live in the country besets most of us sooner or later. Spring with grass vividly green, buds bursting and every pond a bedlam of the shrill, rhythmic whistle of frogs, is the most dangerous season. Some take a walk in the park. Others write for Strout's farm catalogues, read them hungrily and are well. But there are the incurables. Their fever is fed... more...

IF YOUR BABY MUST TRAVEL IN WARTIME Have you been on a train lately? The railroads have a hard job to do these days, one they are doing well. But before you decide on a trip with a baby, you should realize what a wartime train is like. So let's look into one. This train is crowded. At every stop more people get on—more and still more. Soldiers and sailors on furloughs, men on business trips,... more...

The title to this book has met with general opprobrium, except in a few quarters, where it was fortunately regarded as beneath contempt. Colonel Ingham even exacted an explanation by telegraph from the Editor, when he learned from the Governor-General of Northern Siberia what the title was. This explanation the Editor gave in the following note. It is, however, impossible to change the title, as he... more...

ACT I SCENE 1 A small railway station near London. Time: Ten years ago. BERT'Ow goes it, Bill? BILLGoes it? 'Ow d'yer think it goes? BERTI don't know, Bill. 'Ow is it? BILLBloody. BERTWhy? What's wrong? BILLWrong? Nothing ain't wrong. BERTWhat's up then? BILLNothing ain't right. BERTWhy, wot's the worry? BILLWot's the worry? They don't give... more...

ILKA ON THE HILL-TOP Mr. Julius Hahn and his son Fritz were on a summer journey in the Tyrol. They had started from Mayrhofen early in the afternoon, on two meek-eyed, spiritless farm horses, and they intended to reach Ginzling before night-fall. There was a great blaze of splendor hidden somewhere behind the western mountain-tops; broad bars of fiery light were climbing the sky, and the châlets and... more...

CHAPTER I INTRODUCTORY What is meant by art?—The art faculty—How artists may be compared—The aim of illumination—Distinction between illumination and miniature—Definition of illumination—The first miniature painter—Origin of the term “miniature”—Ovid's allusion to his little book. The desire for decoration is probably as old as the human race. Nature, of course, is the source... more...

CHAPTER I. THE STUDY OF ILLUSION. Common sense, knowing nothing of fine distinctions, is wont to draw a sharp line between the region of illusion and that of sane intelligence. To be the victim of an illusion is, in the popular judgment, to be excluded from the category of rational men. The term at once calls up images of stunted figures with ill-developed brains, half-witted creatures, hardly... more...