Flies and Boys. Hot as hot. Through the open window, where a couple of long shoots of one of the grapevines hung down, partially shading the room within, a broad, glowing ray of light, which made the shadows near look purply black, streamed right across the head of Marcus, a Roman lad of about eighteen, making his close, curly, brown hair glisten as if some of the threads were of gold, while the light... more...

s it time?" Jarth Rolan asked anxiously. Pilot Lan Barda pushed him gently back into a seat. "No, but very soon. And be calm—you're jumpier than a human." "But we've waited so long—yes, a long time. And I am anxious to get home." Lan peered calmly out of his vehicle. They were hovering in Earth's upper atmosphere, at the permitted limit. "Be patient. These... more...

A carrion crow sat on an oak,Watching a tailor shape his cloak."Wife, bring me my old bent bow,That I may shoot yon carrion crow."The tailor he shot and missed his mark,And shot his own sow quite through the heart."Wife, wife, bring brandy in a spoon,For our old sow is in a swoon." B Ba, ba, black sheep,  Have you any wool?Yes, marry, have I,  Three bags full.One for my... more...

The Outcast. A furious gust of wind tore down the chimney, blowing the smoke out into the small but cosily-furnished sitting-room of the little cottage at Kingston-on-Thames, and sending a shower of sparks hissing and spluttering on to the hearth-rug, where they were promptly trodden out by a tall, fair-haired young giant, who lazily removed his feet from a chair on which they reposed, for the purpose.... more...

MELONS BY BRET HARTE As I do not suppose the most gentle of readers will believe that anybody's sponsors in baptism ever wilfully assumed the responsibility of such a name, I may as well state that I have reason to infer that Melons was simply the nickname of a small boy I once knew. If he had any other, I never knew it. Various theories were often projected by me to account for this strange... more...

WE COMMISSION OUR SHIP.  VISIT PORTSMOUTH.  PREPARE TO SAIL. On one of those delicious semi-tropical afternoons, which geologists tell us once bathed the whole of our island, and which even now, as though loath to part from its one-time home, still dwells lovingly in Devonia's summer, I wended my way to Devonport Park to feast my eyes once again on the familiar scenes of early days. What I... more...

CHAPTER I A CALL TO BATTLE "Come on now, ready with those smoke bombs! Where's the Confederate army, anyhow? And you Unionists, don't look as though you were going to rob an apple orchard! Suffering snakes, you're going into battle and you're going to lick the boots off the Johnnie Rebs! Look the part! Look the part! Now, then, what about the cannon? Got plenty of powder in... more...

ABRAHAM LINCOLN Two Chroniclers: The two speaking together: Kinsmen, you shall behold Our stage, in mimic action, mould A man's character. This is the wonder, always, everywhere—Not that vast mutability which is event,The pits and pinnacles of change,But man's desire and valiance that rangeAll circumstance, and come to port unspent. Agents are these events, these ecstasies,And tribulations,... more...

CHAPTER I HARD YOUNG HEARTS Behind the Venetian blinds of a respectable middle-class, fifty-pound-a-year, "semi-detached," "family" house, in a respectable middle-class road of the little north-county town of Sidon, midway between the trees of wealth upon the hill, and the business quarters that ended in squalor on the bank of the broad and busy river,--a house boasting a few shabby... more...

HISTORICAL NOTE. The design followed out in the succeeding poem has been to touch upon the leading historical incidents of Saul's career that lead up to and explain his tragic death on Mount Gilboa. With him, nearly 3,000 years ago, commenced the Monarchical government of the Israelites, who had previously been governed by a Theocracy. The Prophet Samuel, who anointed Saul, was the last of the... more...