CHAPTER I. LAUNCHING OF MY LIFE-BOAT.   Wild was the night, yet a wilder night    Hung around o'er the mother's pillow;  In her bosom there waged a fiercer fight    Than the fight on the wrathful billow. Already there were more children than potatoes in her hut of logs, and yet, another unwelcome guest was coming, to whom fate had ordained that it would have been money in his... more...

Although art had, under French influence, become unnatural, bombastical, in fine, exactly contrary to every rule of good taste, the courts, vain of their collections of works of art, still emulated each other in the patronage of the artists of the day, whose creations, tasteless as they were, nevertheless afforded a species of consolation to the people, by diverting their thoughts from the miseries of... more...

No description available

HEMP The Anglo-Saxon farmers had scarce conquered foothold, stronghold, freehold in the Western wilderness before they became sowers of hemp—with remembrance of Virginia, with remembrance of dear ancestral Britain. Away back in the days when they lived with wife, child, flock in frontier wooden fortresses and hardly ventured forth for water, salt, game, tillage—in the very summer of that wild... more...

Preface The reward of the story-teller who has successfully met the child's story interest is the plea embodied in the title of this book: "Tell me another story." The book meets this child longing on a psychologic basis. It consists of groups of stories arranged so that their telling will result in definite mental growth for children, as well as satisfied story hunger. There has been a... more...

INTRODUCTION AIMS AND PURPOSES OF SPEAKING It is obvious that the style of your public speaking will depend upon the specific purpose you have in view. If you have important truths which you wish to make known, or a great and definite cause to serve, you are likely to speak about it with earnestness and probably with eloquence. If, however, your purpose in speaking is a selfish one—if your object is... more...

CHAPTER V. AUGUSTUS SCARBOROUGH.   Harry Annesley, when he found himself in London, could not for a moment shake off that feeling of nervous anxiety as to the fate of Mountjoy Scarborough which had seized hold of him. In every newspaper which he took in his hand he looked first for the paragraph respecting the fate of the missing man, which the paper was sure to contain in one of its columns. It was... more...

INTRODUCTION. The mythic element cannot be eliminated out of history. Men who play leading parts on the world’s stage gather about them the admiration of friends and the animosity of disappointed rivals or political enemies. The atmosphere becomes charged with legends of what they have said or done—some inventions, some distortions of facts, but rarely or never accurate. Their outward acts, being... more...

ALEXANDER CRUMMELLAN APOSTLE OF NEGRO CULTURE. A noted English lawyer-author has declared that the twelfth chapter of Ecclesiastes is the final word of the world’s philosophy; that no ancient or modern thinker has uttered a profounder word. And in the seventh verse of that chapter it reads, “Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was; and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it.”... more...

CHAPTER I It was in the early days of April; Bernard Longueville had been spending the winter in Rome. He had travelled northward with the consciousness of several social duties that appealed to him from the further side of the Alps, but he was under the charm of the Italian spring, and he made a pretext for lingering. He had spent five days at Siena, where he had intended to spend but two, and still... more...