CHAPTER I. The spring has come again to the hills and valleys of our home. The day awakes, a breeze moves strongly through the forest, as if its task were to carry away the lingering night; the birds begin to twitter, and here and there an early lark utters his note. Among the pine-trees, with their fresh green needles, a whispering and rustling is heard. The sun has risen above the mountaintop, and... more...

CHAPTER I. A BRIEF ACCOUNT OF THE DISCOVERY OF THE MISSISSIPPI.—DESOTO'S EXPEDITION,—HIS DEATH,—THE FATE OF HIS PARTY, ETC. On a recent excursion to the Crescent City, I collected some facts and statistics which are respectfully submitted to the public. In attempting a description of this magnificent emporium of commerce, as it exists at the present day, I will briefly allude to its early... more...

LIVES OF EMINENT GRAMMARIANS (506) I. The science of grammar [842] was in ancient times far from being in vogue at Rome; indeed, it was of little use in a rude state of society, when the people were engaged in constant wars, and had not much time to bestow on the cultivation of the liberal arts [843]. At the outset, its pretensions were very slender, for the earliest men of learning, who were both... more...

"Did it go well?" the aide asked. The admiral, affectionately known as the Old Man, did not reply until he'd closed the door, crossed the room, and dropped into the chair at his desk. Then he said: "Go well? It did not go at all. Every blasted one of them, from the President on down, can think of nothing but the way the Combine over-ran Venus. When I mention P-boats, they shout that... more...

PREFACE Among the difficulties which beset the path of the conscientious translator, a sense of his own unworthiness must ever take precedence; but another, scarcely less disconcerting, is the likelihood of misunderstanding some allusion which was perfectly familiar to the author and his public, but which, by reason of its purely local significance, is obscure and subject to the misinterpretation and... more...

CHAPTER I Down an old trail in the Ghost Range in northwestern Mexico, just across the Arizona border, a mounted prospector wound his way, his horse carefully picking its steps among the broken granite blocks which had tumbled upon the ancient path from the mountain wall above. A burro followed, laden heavily with pack, bed-roll, pick, frying-pan, and battered coffee-pot, yet stepping along... more...

I am unwilling to send out this Harrison, the friend of some twenty years’ standing, without a few words of introduction to those readers who don’t know it. The book is full of interest, not only to every Shakspere student, but to every reader of English history, every man who has the least care for his forefathers’ lives. Though it does contain sheets of padding now and then, yet the writer’s... more...

PREFACE "Sanine" is a thoroughly uncomfortable book, but it has a fierce energy which has carried it in a very short space of time into almost every country in Europe and at last into this country, where books, like everything else, are expected to be comfortable. It has roused fury both in Russia and in Germany, but, being rather a furious effort itself, it has thriven on that, and reached an... more...

CHAPTER I. NORA. "Why, then, Miss Nora—" "Yes, Hannah?" "You didn't see the masther going this way, miss?" "What do you mean, Hannah? Father is never at home at this hour." "I thought maybe—" said Hannah. She spoke in a dubious voice, backing a little away. Hannah was a small, squat woman, of a truly Irish type. Her nose was celestial, her mouth wide,... more...

ACROSS EUROPE Stockholm to Berlin Our journey begins at Stockholm, the capital of my native country. Leaving Stockholm by train in the evening, we travel all night in comfortable sleeping-cars and arrive next morning at the southernmost point of Sweden, the port of Trelleborg, where the sunlit waves sweep in from the Baltic Sea. Here we might expect to have done with railway travelling, and we rather... more...