THE EARRING. "Come oot o' the gutter, ye nickum!" cried, in harsh, half-masculine voice, a woman standing on the curbstone of a short, narrow, dirty lane, at right angles to an important thoroughfare, itself none of the widest or cleanest. She was dressed in dark petticoat and print wrapper. One of her shoes was down at the heel, and discovered a great hole in her stocking. Had her black... more...

Our Frank—A Buckinghamshire Story. “From east to west,At home is best.”        German proverb. It was a mild spring evening, and Mrs Frank Darvell was toiling slowly up Whiteleaf Hill on her way back from market. She had walked every step of the way there to sell her ducklings, and now the basket on her arm was heavy with the weight of various small grocery packets. Up till now she had... more...

THE VOYAGE OF THE GOLDEN HIND All through the sixteenth century the South Seas were regarded as a mysterious wonderworld, whence Spain drew unlimited wealth of gold and silver bullion, of pearls and precious stones. Spain had declared the Pacific 'a closed sea' to the rest of the world. But in 1567 it happened that Sir John Hawkins, an English mariner, was cruising in the Gulf of Mexico, when... more...

The sun was blazing down upon a city on the western shore of the Caspian. It was a primitive city, and yet its size and population rendered it worthy of the term. It consisted of a vast aggregation of buildings, which were for the most part mere huts. Among them rose, however, a few of more solid build and of higher pretensions. These were the abodes of the chiefs and great men, the temples, and places... more...

Foreword The Evangelization of the World is being accomplished more rapidly than we think. Three mighty movements are constantly at work—Reformation, Heathen Missions and Emigration or Colonization. By the Reformation Europe was evangelized; by Heathen Missions Asia and Africa are being evangelized and by Emigration or Colonization North and South America and Australia have been to a large extent... more...

Of the seventy-three "Epigrams and Jeux d'Esprit," which are printed at the commencement of this volume, forty-five were included in Murray's one-volume edition of 1837, eighteen have been collected from various publications, and ten are printed and published for the first time. The "Devil's Drive," which appears in Moore's Letters and Journals, and in the sixth... more...

CHAPTER I THE DAY BEFORE CHRISTMAS The Blairs were a particularly nice family. That is what the neighbors always said of them, and, to tell the truth, the Blairs believed it. That is, the father and mother thought the children were particularly nice, and the children thought their father and mother and each other particularly nice; and so, of course, they all must have been very nice indeed. Saturdays... more...

THE OMNIBUS. It was not so much a day as a burning, fiery furnace. The roar of London's traffic reverberated under a sky of coppery blue; the pavements threw out waves of heat, thickened with the reek of restaurants and perfumery shops; and dust became cinders, and the wearing of flesh a weariness. Streams of sweat ran from the bellies of 'bus-horses when they halted. Men went up and down... more...

CHAPTER I. A few days after the adventure detailed in our last chapter, the American party, consisting of Major and Miss Montgomerie, and the daughters of the Governor, with their attendants, embarked in the schooner, to the command of which Gerald had been promoted. The destination of the whole was the American port of Buffalo, situate at the further extremity of the lake, nearly opposite to the fort... more...

NOTES. OLD SONGS. I heard, "in other days," a father singing a comic old song to one of his children, who was sitting on his knee. This was in Yorkshire: and yet it could hardly be a Yorkshire song, as the scene was laid in another county. It commenced with— "Randle O'Shay has sold his mare For nineteen groats at Warrin'ton fair," and goes on to show how the simpleton was... more...