Paul Asher, 27, men's furnishings buyer, leaned back and let the cloth band be fastened across his chest, just under his armpits. He adjusted his heavy spectacles, closed his eyes for a moment, breathed deeply, and was off. The semi-darkness was dispelled as he shot out of a tunnel into dazzling sunlight. The high-powered vehicle he was driving purred smoothly as it took the long, rising curve.... more...

Ten thousand persons in New York looked skyward at the first rumble of sound. The flash caught them that way, seared them to cinder, liquefied their eyeballs, brought their vitals boiling out of the fissures of their bodies. They were the lucky ones. The rest died slowly, their monument the rubble which had once been a city. Of all that, Case Damon knew nothing. Rocketing up in the self-service... more...

CHAPTER I School and Factory When I first met the heroine of this tale, Marie, she was twenty-three years old, yet had lived enough for a woman of more than twice her age; indeed, few women of any age ever acquire the amount of mental experience possessed by this factory hand and servant girl. She had more completely translated her life into terms of thought than any other woman of my acquaintance. She... more...

FEW writers of the tremendously virile and significant school of modern Spain summarize in their work so completely the tendencies of the resurgimiento as does Eduardo Zamacois. "Renaissance" is really the watchword of his life and literary output. This man is a human dynamo, a revitalizing force in Spanish life and letters, an artist who is more than a mere artist; he is a man with a message,... more...

CHAPTER I Vulcan's Hammer The entire staff of the world-famed Spindrift Scientific Foundation gathered in the conference room of the big gray laboratory building on the southeast corner of Spindrift Island. It was unusual for the whole staff to be called to a meeting. Even more unusual—not a single member knew what the meeting was about. Rick Brant, son of the Spindrift Foundation's... more...

CHAPTER I. ON THE WAY BACK FROM THE GAME. "But the Bird boys won the prize of a silver cup!" "What if they did? It was by a hair's breadth, Mr. Smarty!" "And their monoplane was proven to be faster than the big biplane you built, Puss Carberry!" "Oh! was it? Don't you be too sure of that, Larry!" "Didn't it land on the summit of Old Thunder Top ahead... more...

WASHINGTON IRVING, ESQ. AND HIS WORKS. Washington Irving was born, in the State of New York, in the year 1782, and is, consequently, in his fifty-first year. His early life cannot better be told than in his own graceful language, prefixed to the most celebrated of his writings as "the author's account of himself." "I was always fond of visiting new scenes, and observing strange... more...

CHAPTER I THE INVITATION It was late in the afternoon in the spring of the year 1630; the hilltops of the south of Scotland were covered with masses of cloud, and a fierce wind swept the driving rain before it with such force that it was not easy to make way against it. It had been raining for three days without intermission. Every little mountain burn had become a boiling torrent, while the rivers had... more...

THE TEMPEST IN THE BAY. "Well, parsenger, we're likely to get in to port before long, if we only have a breeze of wind," said Harvey Barth, the cook and steward of the brig Waldo, in a peculiar, drawling tone, by which any one who knew the speaker might have recognized him without the use of his eyes. The steward was a tall, lank, lantern-jawed man, whose cheek-bones were almost as... more...

In 1898 I published a translation of Sudermann's "Der Katzensteg," under the title of "Regina"; in 1906 of "Es War," under the title of "The Undying Past," and in 1908 of "Der Taufer," under the title of "John the Baptist." All these books were translated by Miss Beatrice Marshall, and the translations were received in England, America, and Germany... more...