THE HISTORY OF TOM THUMB In the days of King Arthur, Merlin, the famous enchanter, was out on a journey, and stopped one day at the cottage of an honest ploughman to ask for refreshment. The ploughman's wife brought him some milk in a wooden bowl, and some brown bread on a wooden platter. Merlin could not help observing that, although everything within the cottage was particularly neat and in good... more...

PREFACE Madame: There are moments when one seems to come to life. One looks about and distinguishes a creature whose foot-print closely resembles the ace of spades. The thing says: bow-wow. It is a dog. One looks again. The ace of spades is now an ace of clubs. The thing says: pffffffff—and it is a cat. This is the history of the visible world and in particular, that of my god-children, Toby-Dog and... more...

INTRODUCTION The present work completes a series of fictitious narratives, intended to illustrate the manners of Scotland at three different periods. Waverley embraced the age of our fathers, Guy Mannering that of our own youth, and the Antiquary refers to the last ten years of the eighteenth century. I have, in the two last narratives especially, sought my principal personages in the class of society... more...

INTRODUCTION Between those last precise accounts of military engagements which antiquity has left us in small number, and what may be called the modern history of war, there lies a period of many centuries—quite 1400 years—during which the details of an action and even the main features of a campaign are never given us by contemporary recorders. Through all that vast stretch of time we are... more...

CHAPTER I. "That child," said my aunt Mercy, looking at me with indigo-colored eyes, "is possessed." When my aunt said this I was climbing a chest of drawers, by its knobs, in order to reach the book-shelves above it, where my favorite work, "The Northern Regions," was kept, together with "Baxter's Saints' Rest," and other volumes of that sort, belonging to my... more...

A HISTORY OF THE TOWN OF FAIRFAX When man reaches out into space to explore a new planet, his adventure will be comparable in many ways to that of the colonists who braved the space of water in the early seventeenth century to establish their proprietary rights on a strange continent called "America". These colonists found themselves confronted with the need to feed, house and clothe themselves... more...

WAMPUM. When Columbus, on his second voyage to the New World, landed upon Cape Cabron, Cuba, the cacique of the adjacent country meeting him upon the shore offered him a string of beads made of the hard parts of shells as an assurance of welcome. Similar gifts were often made to the great discoverer, whenever the natives sought to win his favor or wished to assure him of their own good will. These... more...

CHAPTER I When Mr. O'Callaghan died, after a long, severe, and expensive sickness, he left to his widow a state of unlimited poverty and seven boys. "Sure, an' sivin's the parfect number," she said through her tears as she looked round on her flock; "and Tim was the bist man as iver lived, may the saints presarve him an' rist him from his dreadful pains!" Thus did... more...

CHAPTER I.—The Chapel Green of Esker Dearg. The chapel of Esker Dearg, or the Red Ridge, was situated in a rich and well-cultivated country, that for miles about it literally teemed with abundance. The Red Ridge under which it stood was one of those long eminences, almost, if not altogether, peculiar to Ireland. It was, as the name betokens, a prolonged elevation that ran for nearly a mile and a half... more...

CHAPTER I DOG-BITE I "And yet," Edward Henry Machin reflected as at six minutes to six he approached his own dwelling at the top of Bleakridge, "and yet—I don't feel so jolly after all!" The first two words of this disturbing meditation had reference to the fact that, by telephoning twice to his stockbrokers at Manchester, he had just made the sum of three hundred and forty-one... more...