CHAPTER I Michael Arranstoun folded a letter which he had been reading for the seventh time, with a vicious intentness, and then jumping up from the big leather chair in which he had been buried, he said aloud, "Damn!" When a young, rich and good-looking man says that particular word aloud with a fearful grind of the teeth, one may know that he is in the very devil of a temper! Michael... more...

INTRODUCTION The testimony of librarians as to the kind of books people are reading nowadays is somewhat discouraging to the book-lover who has been brought up in the old traditions. We are told that Scott and Thackeray and George Eliot cannot compete with the year's "best sellers," and that the old classics are read only by the few who have a cultivated taste and a trained intelligence.... more...

I The sister Hours in circles linked,Daughters of men, of men the mates,Are gone on flow with the day that winked,With the night that spanned at golden gates.Mothers, they leave us, quickening seed;They bear us grain or flower or weed,As we have sown; is nought extinctFor them we fill to be our Fates.Life of the breath is but the loan;Passing death what we have sown. Pearly are they till the pale... more...

No description available

A sleepy Sunday morning—and no need for any one to go to church. It was at Neuchâtel, under the trees by the lake, that I first became conscious of what wonderful assistance Sweetheart might be to me in my literary work. She corrected me as to the date upon which we had made our pilgrimage to Chaumont, as to the color of the hair of the pretty daughter of the innkeeper whom we had seen there—in... more...

CHAPTER I. BERWEN BANKS. Caer Madoc is a sleepy little Welsh town, lying two miles from the sea coast. Far removed from the busy centres of civilisation, where the battle of life breeds keen wits and deep interests, it is still, in the opinion of its inhabitants, next to London, the most important place in the United Kingdom. It has its church and three chapels, its mayor and corporation, jail, town... more...

Uncle Indefer  "I have a conscience, my dear, on this matter," said an old gentleman to a young lady, as the two were sitting in the breakfast parlour of a country house which looked down from the cliffs over the sea on the coast of Carmarthenshire. "And so have I, Uncle Indefer; and as my conscience is backed by my inclination, whereas yours is not—" "You think that I shall give... more...

No description available

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. There is still preserved a letter from England, written in a fine hand, with red ink, dated Obeydon? Feb. 5, 1641, and directed, “to her very loveing sonneSamuel Boreman,Ipswich in New Englandgive this withhaste.” The letter is as follows: “Good sonne, I have receaved your letter: whereby I understand that you are in good health, for which I give God thanks, as we are... more...

Subject. Population. Gist. “For some generations the colored element may continue to make decennial gains, but it is very probable that the next thirty years will be the last to show total gains, and then the decrease will be slow but sure until final disappearance.” I have taken this quotation from another work by the same author as it represents more clearly than any other condensed statement the... more...