Report on Surgery. In presenting this report I will not attempt to give any historical data connected with the subject of surgery, since that has been ably done in the report of last year. I shall assume, and that without hesitation, that surgery is a science, properly so-called. That it is an art, is also true. But what is science? What is art? Science is knowledge. Art the application of that... more...

I ASHES OF EMPIRE In point of age, Gaston the strenuous was still no more than a lusty infant among the cities of the brown plain when the boom broke and the junto was born, though its beginnings as a halt camp ran back to the days of the later Mormon migrations across the thirsty plain; to that day when the advanced guard of Zophar Smith's ox-train dug wells in the damp sands of Dry Creek and... more...

The position of Ancient Egypt was unique, not in one, but in every sense. To begin at the very foundation of life in that country, we find that the soil was unlike any other on earth in its origin. Every acre of fruitful land between the first cataract and the sea had been brought from Inner Africa, and each year additions were made to it. Out of this mud, borne down thousands of miles from the great... more...

CHAPTER THE FIRST AN ALTERED WORLD I It was on a blustering March morning in 1919 that Tabs regained his freedom. His last five months had been spent among doctors, having sundry bullets extracted from his legs. He walked with a limp which was not too perceptible unless he grew tired. His emotions were similar to those of a man newly released from gaol: he felt dazed, vaguely happy and a little lost.... more...

BIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION By J. W. Mackail William Morris, one of the most eminent imaginative writers of the Victorian age, differs from most other poets and men of letters in two ways—first, he did great work in many other things as well as in literature; secondly, he had beliefs of his own about the meaning and conduct of life, about all that men think and do and make, very different from those of... more...

SECTION I. PHYSIOLOGICAL CONDITIONS AS AFFECTING AND INDICATING CHARACTER.   I.—VALUE OF SELF-KNOWLEDGE. “Knowledge is power”—to accomplish, to enjoy—and these are the only ends for which man was created. All knowledge confers this power. Thus, how incalculably, and in how many ways, have recent discoveries in chemistry enhanced human happiness, of which the lucifer match furnishes a home... more...

I had entered, in an idle mood, the shop of one of those curiosity venders who are called marchands de bric-à-brac in that Parisian argot which is so perfectly unintelligible elsewhere in France. You have doubtless glanced occasionally through the windows of some of these shops, which have become so numerous now that it is fashionable to buy antiquated furniture, and that every petty stockbroker... more...

Two years ago I was travelling by diligence in the Sahara Desert on the great caravan route, which starts from Beni-Mora and ends, they say, at Tombouctou. For fourteen hours each day we were on the road, and each evening about nine o'clock we stopped at a Bordj, or Travellers' House, ate a hasty meal, threw ourselves down on our gaudy Arab rugs, and slept heavily till the hour before dawn,... more...

MARY WARE'SPROMISED LAND PART I CHAPTER I A SEEKER OF NEW TRAILS When the Ware family boarded the train in San Antonio that September morning for their long journey back to Lone-Rock, every passenger on the Pullman straightened up with an appearance of interest. Somehow their arrival had the effect of a breath of fresh air blowing through the stuffy car. Even before their entrance some curiosity... more...

SOME STRANGE AND CURIOUS PUNISHMENTS. In the month of January, 1761, "Joseph Bennett, John Jenkins, Owen McCarty, and John Wright were publickly whipt at the Cart's Tail thro' the City of New York for petty Larceny,"—so the newspaper account states,—"pursuant to Sentence inflicted on them by the Court of Quarter Sessions held last Week for the Trial of Robbers," etc. In... more...