CHAPTER I It is in spring that wild birds make their strongest appeal to the human mind; in fact, the words "birds" and "spring" seem almost synonymous, so accustomed are we to associate one with the other. All the wild riotous singing, all the brave flashing of wings and tail, all the mad dashing in and out among the thickets or soaring upward above the tree-tops, are impelled by the... more...

POEMS. Tis sweet in boyhood's visionary mood,When glowing Fancy, innocently gay,Flings forth, like motes, her bright aërial brood,To dance and shine in Hope's prolific ray;'Tis sweet, unweeting how the flight of yearsMay darkling roll in trials and in tears,To dress the future in what garb we list,And shape the thousand joys that never may exist.But he, sad wight! of all that feverish... more...

CARNEGIE, ANDREW (1837-  ), American “captain of industry” and benefactor, was born in humble circumstances in Dunfermline, Scotland, on the 25th of November 1837. In 1848 his father, who had been a Chartist, emigrated to America, settling in Allegheny City, Pennsylvania. The raw Scots lad started work at an early age as a bobbin-boy in a cotton factory, and a few years later was engaged as a... more...

TO THE CHILDREN Dear Little Friends: I want to introduce the farmyard people to you, and to have you call upon them and become better acquainted as soon as you can. Some of them are working for us, and we surely should know them. Perhaps, too, some of us are working for them, since that is the way in this delightful world of ours, and one of the happiest parts of life is helping and being helped. It is... more...

California, by Dr. Josiah Royce, in the handsome as well as handy American Commonwealths series, is commonly regarded as the best short history of California ever written, and particularly so as to the early mining era. Dr. Royce knew his state, and a more competent writer could hardly have been selected. Reviewing, in his history, almost everything accessible, worthy of consideration, in connection... more...

December 31, 1892. (A Characteristic Welcome to the Coming Year.) It was on the 31st of December that they met. It had been arranged that at the final hour of the last day of the expiring year they should compare notes, and not one of them had failed to keep the appointment. It would be scarcely right to say they were cheerful, but merriment was not included in the programme. The Military Man... more...

I. INTRODUCTION. I have been requested to write some papers on our Lord's miracles. I venture the attempt in the belief that, seeing they are one of the modes in which his unseen life found expression, we are bound through them to arrive at some knowledge of that life. For he has come, The Word of God, that we may know God: every word of his then, as needful to the knowing of himself, is needful... more...

CHAPTER I SIR JOHN FOTERELL Who that has ever seen them can forget the ruins of Blossholme Abbey, set upon their mount between the great waters of the tidal estuary to the north, the rich lands and grazing marshes that, backed with woods, border it east and south, and to the west by the rolling uplands, merging at last into purple moor, and, far away, the sombre eternal hills! Probably the scene has... more...

IN THE FURROW The coulée was a long, scarlet gash in the brown level of the Dakota prairie, for the sumach, dyed by the frosts of the early autumn, covered its sides like a cloth whose upper folds were thrown far over the brinks of the winding ravine and, southward, half-way to the new cottonwood shack of the Lancasters. Near it, a dark band against the flaming shrub, stretched the plowed strip,... more...

I Strether's first question, when he reached the hotel, was about his friend; yet on his learning that Waymarsh was apparently not to arrive till evening he was not wholly disconcerted. A telegram from him bespeaking a room "only if not noisy," reply paid, was produced for the enquirer at the office, so that the understanding they should meet at Chester rather than at Liverpool remained to... more...