Big Reuben’s Raid “ Wake up, boys! Wake up! Tumble out, there! Quick! Big Reuben’s into the pig-pen again!” Our bedroom door was banged wide open, and my father stood before us—a startling apparition—dressed only in his night-shirt and a pair of boots, carrying a stable-lantern in one hand and a rifle in the other. “What is it?” cried Joe, as he bounced out of bed; and, “Where is... more...

'We have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power may be of God, and not of us.'—2 Cor 4:7 'For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord.'—Isaiah 55:8. 'Though ye have lien among the pots, yet shall ye be as the wings of a dove covered with silver, and her feathers with yellow gold.'—Psalm 68:13. When... more...

Pursuant to a call published in all the daily papers, and signed by a large number of prominent citizens and tax-payers of Boston, a public meeting was convened in Faneuil Hall on the evening of Wednesday, the 7th of June, 1876, to take action on the recommendations contained in the Report of the Park Commissioners. The hall was crowded by an intelligent and enthusiastic audience; and the proceedings... more...

PREFACE. I dedicate this work to my countrymen, in whose intelligence, magnanimity and humanity I place the utmost reliance. Although they have long suffered themselves to be swayed by a prejudice as unmanly as it is wicked, and have departed widely from the golden rule of the gospel, in their treatment of the people of color, to suppose that they will always be the despisers and persecutors of this... more...

HOW THE WHALE GOT HIS THROAT IN the sea, once upon a time, O my Best Beloved, there was a Whale, and he ate fishes. He ate the starfish and the garfish, and the crab and the dab, and the plaice and the dace, and the skate and his mate, and the mackereel and the pickereel, and the really truly twirly-whirly eel. All the fishes he could find in all the sea he ate with his mouth—so! Till at last there... more...

CHAPTER I "NAH! Renestine, cannot you come with the skirt and let me lay it in your trunk? You are dreaming, dreaming all the time. My child, these things must be ready by midnight tonight." The girl was thirteen years old and her mother was getting her possessions together to send her to America to join a sister who had already gone there and was married and now sent to have her little sister... more...

NOTICES OF THE LIFE OF LORD BYRON. It has been said of Lord Byron, "that he was prouder of being a descendant of those Byrons of Normandy, who accompanied William the Conqueror into England, than of having been the author of Childe Harold and Manfred." This remark is not altogether unfounded in truth. In the character of the noble poet, the pride of ancestry was undoubtedly one of the most... more...

I AT BREAK OF DAY "Stay here beside her, major. I shall not he needed for an hour yet.Meanwhile I'll go downstairs and snatch a bit of sleep, or talk to oldJane." The night was hot and sultry. Though the windows of the chamber were wide open, and the muslin curtains looped back, not a breath of air was stirring. Only the shrill chirp of the cicada and the muffled croaking of the frogs in... more...

On a bleak, distant unchartered world two ships lay wrecked and a lone man stared at a star hyacinth. Its brilliance burned into his retina ... and he knew that men could easily kill and kill for that one beauty alone. The robbery of the Dosey Asteroids Shipping Station in a remote and spottily explored section of space provided the newscasting systems of the Federation of the Hub with one of the... more...

THE PASSENGER. Toward the latter part of May, 1690, the three-masted schooner the Unicorn sailed from Rochelle for the island of Martinique. A Captain Daniel commanded this vessel, which was armed with a dozen pieces of medium-sized ordnance, a defensive precaution necessary at that period. France was at that time at war with England, and the Spanish pirates would often cross to the windward of the... more...