In the Paris evening papers of Tuesday, February 28, 1866, under the head of Local Items, the following announcement appeared: "A daring robbery, committed against one of our most eminent bankers, M. Andre Fauvel, caused great excitement this morning throughout the neighborhood of Rue de Provence. "The thieves, who were as skilful as they were bold, succeeded in making an entrance to the bank,... more...

Chapter 1. The Tremendous Adventures of Major Brown Rabelais, or his wild illustrator Gustave Dore, must have had something to do with the designing of the things called flats in England and America. There is something entirely Gargantuan in the idea of economising space by piling houses on top of each other, front doors and all. And in the chaos and complexity of those perpendicular streets anything... more...

INTRODUCTION THE greatest of English dramatists except Shakespeare, the first literary dictator and poet-laureate, a writer of verse, prose, satire, and criticism who most potently of all the men of his time affected the subsequent course of English letters: such was Ben Jonson, and as such his strong personality assumes an interest to us almost unparalleled, at least in his age. Ben Jonson came of the... more...

The first thing I did when I bought my Grundy Projector was take a trip to about two years ahead and see what was going to happen to me. Everyone was doing it around that time; students were taking short trips into the future to learn whether or not they would pass their exams, married couples were looking ahead to see how many kids they were going to have, businessmen were going into the future to... more...

Entire Sanctification as Taught by John. John, before Pentecost, was emphatically a Son of Thunder. He could forbid a man to cast out devils in the name of Jesus, because the man was not of his own particular fold. He was ready to imitate Elijah by calling down fire from heaven to destroy the Samaritans who would not extend the rites of hospitality to his Master. He was eager to have the highest... more...

THE COIN OF DIONYSIUS It was eight o'clock at night and raining, scarcely a time when a business so limited in its clientele as that of a coin dealer could hope to attract any customer, but a light was still showing in the small shop that bore over its window the name of Baxter, and in the even smaller office at the back the proprietor himself sat reading the latest Pall Mall. His enterprise... more...

I. White Otter's Own Shadow White Otter's heart was bad. He sat alone on the rim-rocks of the bluffs overlooking the sunlit valley. To an unaccustomed eye from below he might have been a part of nature's freaks among the sand rocks. The yellow grass sloped away from his feet mile after mile to the timber, and beyond that to the prismatic mountains. The variegated lodges of the... more...

CHAPTER I. THE ASTRONOMICAL OBSERVATORY. Early Astronomical Observations—The Observatory of Tycho Brahe—The Pupil of the Eye—Vision of Faint Objects—The Telescope—The Object-Glass—Advantages of Large Telescopes—The Equatorial—The Observatory—The Power of a Telescope—Reflecting Telescopes—Lord Rosse's Great Reflector at Parsonstown—How the mighty Telescope is... more...

PREFACE The study of music notation and terminology by classes in conservatories and in music departments of colleges and normal schools is a comparative innovation, one reason for the non-existence of such courses in the past being the lack of a suitable text-book, in which might be found in related groups clear and accurate definitions of the really essential terms. But with the constantly increasing... more...

CHAPTER FIRST. THE LANDSCAPE OF THE STORY. I see old Sylvester Peabody—the head of the Peabody family—seated in the porch of his country dwelling, like an ancient patriarch, in the calm of the morning. His broad-brimmed hat lies on the bench at his side, and his venerable white locks flow down his shoulders, which time in one hundred seasons of battle and sorrow, of harvest and drouth, of toil and... more...