I. The sun was just going down, a hissing globe of fire and torment. Already the lower limb was in contact with the jagged backbone of the mountain chain that rimmed the desert with purple and gold. Out on the barren, hard-baked flat in front of the corral, just where it had been unhitched when the paymaster and his safe were dumped soon after dawn, a weather-beaten ambulance was throwing unbroken a... more...

Sethos entered the park. Brown autumn leaves crumpled sharply beneath his feet, the green grass sank. The sun was nearly gone, and the last of the children passed him, chattering as they faded into the twilight. Only one other person remained in the park, and she was waiting for Sethos. "Ela," he said. "Have you been here long?" She touched his cheek with hers in greeting. "Not at... more...

Some joker in the dear, dead days now virtually beyond recall won two-bit immortality by declaring that, "What this country needs is a good five-cent cigar." Which is, of course, Victorian malarkey. What this country really needs is a good five-cent nickel. Or perhaps a good cigar-shaped spaceship. There's a fortune waiting somewhere out in space for the man who can go out there and claim... more...

LADY SUSAN VERNON TO MR. VERNONLangford, Dec. MY DEAR BROTHER,—I can no longer refuse myself the pleasure of profiting by your kind invitation when we last parted of spending some weeks with you at Churchhill, and, therefore, if quite convenient to you and Mrs. Vernon to receive me at present, I shall hope within a few days to be introduced to a sister whom I have so long desired to be acquainted... more...

INTRODUCTION No man since Washington has become to Americans so familiar or so beloved a figure as Abraham Lincoln. He is to them the representative and typical American, the man who best embodies the political ideals of the nation. He is typical in the fact that he sprang from the masses of the people, that he remained through his whole career a man of the people, that his chief desire was to be in... more...

INTRODUCTION"... Argentea proles,Auro deterior, fulvo pretiosior aere."(Ovid)Succeeding times a silver age beholdExcelling brass, but more excelled by Gold. Hessiod, in his celebrated distribution of mankind, divides the species into three orders of intellect. "The first place," says he, "belongs to him who can, by his own powers, discern what is fit and right, and penetrate to the... more...

"But why Turkish?" asked Mr. Sherlock Holmes, gazing fixedly at my boots. I was reclining in a cane-backed chair at the moment, and my protruded feet had attracted his ever-active attention. "English," I answered in some surprise. "I got them at Latimer's, in Oxford Street." Holmes smiled with an expression of weary patience. "The bath!" he said; "the bath! Why... more...

CHAPTER I You could not call the place a village, nor yet could it be called a town. Viewed from the bluff, on the English side of the river, it was a long stretch of small farmhouses—some painted red, with green shutters, some painted white, with red shutters—set upon long strips of land, green, yellow, and brown, as it chanced to be pasture land, fields of grain, or "plough-land." These... more...

Nick felt almost good-humoredly buoyant after his year’s holiday as a college boy. About a second after leaving Earth he slowed his traveling speed down to the medium velocity of light by shifting from fifth dimension to fourth. Though still a million miles above the wastes of Chaos and twice that distance from the gates of Hell, his X-ray eyes were quick to discern a difference in the road far below... more...

CHAPTER I Among other public buildings in a certain town, which for many reasons it will be prudent to refrain from mentioning, and to which I will assign no fictitious name, there is one anciently common to most towns, great or small: to wit, a workhouse; and in this workhouse was born; on a day and date which I need not trouble myself to repeat, inasmuch as it can be of no possible consequence to the... more...