CHAPTER I. Hints to the English visiting Paris as to their demeanour towards the Parisians, and advice as to the best mode of proceeding in various transactions with them. An appeal to candour and justice against national prejudice. Happiness is the goal for which mankind is ever seeking, but of the many roads which the imagination traces as the surest and nearest to that desideratum, few, perhaps... more...

OFF TO WAR The time was late in the autumn of the second year of the war; the place, the garden of a war hospital in a small Austrian town, which lay at the base of wooded hills, sequestered as behind a Spanish wall, and still preserving its sleepy contented outlook upon existence. Day and night the locomotives whistled by. Some of them hauled to the front trains of soldiers singing and hallooing,... more...

I He entered the backwoods village of Bytown literally on the wings of the wind. It whirled him along like a big snowflake, and dropped him at the door of Moody's "Sportsmen's Retreat," as if he were a New Year's gift from the North Pole. His coming seemed a mere chance; but perhaps there was something more in it, after all. At all events, you shall hear, if you will, the time... more...

1. Mr Bickersdyke Walks behind the Bowler's Arm Considering what a prominent figure Mr John Bickersdyke was to be in Mike Jackson's life, it was only appropriate that he should make a dramatic entry into it. This he did by walking behind the bowler's arm when Mike had scored ninety-eight, causing him thereby to be clean bowled by a long-hop. It was the last day of the Ilsworth cricket... more...

I.MILITARY PRISONERS. The cases of bad treatment of prisoners in Germany have been made known very widely. No one, I imagine, can wish to defend bad treatment of prisoners anywhere (even of criminal prisoners), and such a horrible state of things as that of Wittenberg during the typhus epidemic is a disgrace to human nature. But Mr. Lithgow Osborne says: “My whole impression of the camp authorities... more...

JANUARY 1666-1667 January 1st. Lay long, being a bitter, cold, frosty day, the frost being now grown old, and the Thames covered with ice. Up, and to the office, where all the morning busy. At noon to the 'Change a little, where Mr. James Houblon and I walked a good while speaking of our ill condition in not being able to set out a fleet (we doubt) this year, and the certain ill effect that must... more...

CANTO I. The Trystyng.One winter night, at half-past nine,Cold, tired, and cross, and muddy,I had come home, too late to dine,And supper, with cigars and wine,Was waiting in the study. There was a strangeness in the room,And Something white and wavyWas standing near me in the gloom— Itook it for the carpet-broomLeft by that careless slavey.   But presently the Thing beganTo shiver and to sneeze:On... more...

CHAPTER 1 It seemed that Father Anthony gathered all the warmth of the short northern summer and kept it for winter use, for his good nature was an actual physical force. From his ruddy face beamed such a kindliness that people reached out toward him as they might extend their hands toward a comfortable fire. All the labors of his work as an inspector of Jesuit institutions across the length and... more...

Across the narrow gorge the little foot-bridge stretched-a brace of logs, the upper surface hewn, and a slight hand-rail formed of a cedar pole. A flimsy structure, one might think, looking down at the dark and rocky depths beneath, through which flowed the mountain stream, swift and strong, but it was doubtless substantial enough for all ordinary usage, and certainly sufficient for the imponderable... more...

Out of Paradise f I must tell more tales of Raffles, I can but go back to our earliest days together, and fill in the blanks left by discretion in existing annals. In so doing I may indeed fill some small part of an infinitely greater blank, across which you may conceive me to have stretched my canvas for the first frank portrait of my friend. The whole truth cannot harm him now. I shall paint in every... more...