THE BLUE PAVILIONS.   TO A FORMER SCHOOLFELLOW. MY DEAR —, I will not write your name, for we have long been strangers; and I, at any rate, have no desire to renew our friendship. It is now ten years and more from the end of that summer term when we shook hands at the railway-station and went east and west with swelling hearts; and since then no report has come of you. In the meantime you may have... 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...

Safety devices that do not protect. The "unsinkable" ships that, before the days of Bergenholm and of atomic and cosmic energy, sank into the waters of the earth. More particularly, safety devices which, while protecting against one agent of destruction, attract magnet-like another and worse. Such as the armored cable within the walls of a wooden house. It protects the electrical conductors... more...

INTRODUCTION If we define poetry as the heart of man expressed in beautiful language, we shall not say that we have no national poetry. True, America has produced no Shakespeare and no Milton, but we have an inheritance in all English literature; and many poets in America have followed in the footsteps of their literary British forefathers. Puritan life was severe. It was warfare, and manual labor of a... more...

I MONT BLANC, the Dent du Midi, and the Aiguille Verte look across at the bloodless faces that show above the blankets along the gallery of the sanatorium. This roofed-in gallery of rustic wood-work on the first floor of the palatial hospital is isolated in Space and overlooks the world. The blankets of fine wool—red, green, brown, or white—from which those wasted cheeks and shining eyes protrude... more...

CHAPTER I. DEATH AND BURIAL OF A SLAVE'S INFANT. "The small and great are there, and the servant is free from his master." A Southern gentleman, who was visiting in New York, sent me, with his reply to my inquiries for the welfare of his family at home, the following letter which he had just received from one of his married daughters in the South. The reader will be so kind as to take the... more...

THE WIDOW OF DUNSKAITH."Oh, mony a shriek, that waefu' night,Rose frae the stormy main;An' mony a bootless vow was made,An' mony a prayer vain;An' mithers wept, an' widows mournedFor mony a weary day;An' maidens, ance o' blithest mood,Grew sad, and pined away." The northern Sutor of Cromarty is of a bolder character than even the southern one—abrupt, and... more...

BUD LEE WANTS TO KNOW Bud Lee, horse foreman of the Blue Lake Ranch, sat upon the gate of the home corral, builded a cigarette with slow brown fingers, and stared across the broken fields of the upper valley to the rosy glow above the pine-timbered ridge where the sun was coming up. His customary gravity was unusually pronounced. "If a man's got the hunch an egg is bad," he mused, "is... more...

One day a paragraph appears in the papers that a new piece will shortly be produced at such and such a theatre. Paterfamilias lays down the paper and placidly observes that it may be worth while getting seats. Then he goes down to the theatre, books seats, and troubles himself no more about the matter until the first night of the play in question. The world behind the curtain is one with which he is... more...

FOREWORD Having been asked by the Author of this Book, No. 73,194 Private Jack O'Brien of the 28th Northwest Battalion, to write a few words as an introduction to the story which he is placing before the public, it gives me much pleasure to do so. The 6th Canadian Infantry Brigade raised and organized from the four western provinces of Canada has done its share and at the time of writing it is... more...