Chapter 1 I first saw the light in the city of Boston in the year 1857. "What!" you say, "eighteen fifty-seven? That is an odd slip. He means nineteen fifty-seven, of course." I beg pardon, but there is no mistake. It was about four in the afternoon of December the 26th, one day after Christmas, in the year 1857, not 1957, that I first breathed the east wind of Boston, which, I assure... more...

CHAPTER I. "Where shall I sign my name?" Veronica Serra's thin, dark fingers rolled the old silver penholder nervously as she sat at one end of the long library table, looking up at the short, stout man who stood beside her. "Here, if you please, Excellency," answered Lamberto Squarci, with an affable smile. His fingers were dark, too, but not thin, and they were smooth and dingy... more...

or the last time, for the present, I give the children of the British Isles a selection of Fairy Tales once or still existing among them. The story store of Great Britain and Ireland is, I hope, now adequately represented in the four volumes which have won me so many little friends, and of which this is the last. My collections have dealt with the two folk-lore regions of these Isles on different... more...

PREFATORY NOTE "Love is the golden bead in the bottom of the crucible." And the crucible was St. Angé. Fifty years before this story began, St. Angé was a lumber camp; the first gash in that part of the great Solitude to the north, which lay across Beacon Hill, three miles from Hillcrest. When the splendid lumber had been felled within a prescribed limit, Industry took another leap, left St.... more...

Ichabod's Island The tide was at ebb. The noisily rushing spume-spotted waters of the sea were pounding the hard-sand shore of the easterly side of a beautiful island, nestling as a jewel in its setting just within the Capes, which form the shores on either side of Beaufort Inlet, but so exposed that when the winds blow from the sea the full force of the breakers is felt at this point. As this... more...

I am not a susceptible woman. I am objective rather than subjective, and a fairly full experience of life has taught me that most of my impressions are from within out rather than the other way about. For instance, obsession at one time a few years ago of a shadowy figure on my right, just beyond the field of vision, was later exposed as the result of a defect in my glasses. In the same way Maggie, my... more...

PART I "A stifling hot day!" General Hobson lifted his hat and mopped his forehead indignantly. "What on earth this place can be like in June I can't conceive! The tenth of April, and I'll be bound the thermometer's somewhere near eighty in the shade. You never find the English climate playing you these tricks." Roger Barnes looked at his uncle with amusement.... more...

A FAMILIAR PREFACE As a general rule we do not want much encouragement to talk about ourselves; yet this little book is the result of a friendly suggestion, and even of a little friendly pressure. I defended myself with some spirit; but, with characteristic tenacity, the friendly voice insisted, "You know, you really must." It was not an argument, but I submitted at once. If one must! . . . You... more...

THE FIRST ATOMIC TEST On Monday morning July 16, 1945, the world was changed forever when the first atomic bomb was tested in an isolated area of the New Mexico desert. Conducted in the final month of World War II by the top-secret Manhattan Engineer District, this test was code named Trinity. The Trinity test took place on the Alamogordo Bombing and Gunnery Range, about 230 miles south of the... more...

THE career of Olive Fremstad has entailed continuous struggle: a struggle in the beginning with poverty, a struggle with a refractory voice, and a struggle with her own overpowering and dominating temperament. Ambition has steered her course. After she had made a notable name for herself through her interpretations of contralto rôles, she determined to sing soprano parts, and did so, largely by an... more...