I The short-story commenced its career as a verbal utterance, or, as Robert Louis Stevenson puts it, with "the first men who told their stories round the savage camp-fire." It bears the mark of its origin, for even to-day it is true that the more it creates the illusion of the speaking-voice, causing the reader to listen and to see, so that he forgets the printed page, the better does it... more...

INTRODUCTION When William Congreve died in 1729 he left a collection of books which his old friend and publisher, Jacob Tonson, described (in a letter preserved at the Bodleian) as “genteel & well chosen.” Tonson thought so well of the collection that he urged his nephew, then his agent in London, to purchase Congreve’s books. But Congreve had willed them to Henrietta, the young Duchess of... more...

CHAPTER I. ON ELEMENTARY PIANO-FORTE INSTRUCTION. You ask, my dear friend, for some particular information about my piano method, especially with regard to my mode of elementary instruction, which differs essentially from that in common use. I give you here the main points; and, if you place confidence in my experience of forty years, and if you will supply those details which I have omitted, your own... more...

Chapter 1. The Tremendous Adventures of Major Brown Rabelais, or his wild illustrator Gustave Dore, must have had something to do with the designing of the things called flats in England and America. There is something entirely Gargantuan in the idea of economising space by piling houses on top of each other, front doors and all. And in the chaos and complexity of those perpendicular streets anything... more...

FOREWORD This report describes the effects of the atomic bombs which were dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6 and 9, 1945, respectively. It summarizes all the authentic information that is available on damage to structures, injuries to personnel, morale effect, etc., which can be released at this time without prejudicing the security of the United States. This report... more...

ON THE PRONUNCIATION OF ENGLISH WORDS DERIVED FROM LATIN [This paper may perhaps need a few words of introduction concerning the history of the pronunciation of Latin in England. The Latin taught by Pope Gregory's missionaries to their English converts at the beginning of the seventh century was a living language. Its pronunciation, in the mouths of educated people when they spoke carefully, was... more...

CHAPTER I—THE TRAIL OF THE MEAT Dark spruce forest frowned on either side the frozen waterway.  The trees had been stripped by a recent wind of their white covering of frost, and they seemed to lean towards each other, black and ominous, in the fading light.  A vast silence reigned over the land.  The land itself was a desolation, lifeless, without movement, so lone and cold that the spirit of it... more...

The Call to Duty Glinda, the good Sorceress of Oz, sat in the grand court of her palace, surrounded by her maids of honor—a hundred of the most beautiful girls of the Fairyland of Oz. The palace court was built of rare marbles, exquisitely polished. Fountains tinkled musically here and there; the vast colonnade, open to the south, allowed the maidens, as they raised their heads from their... more...

1. I have chosen the four writers mentioned on the programme not so much because they are the four greatest names of Russian literature as because they best represent the point of view from which these lectures are to be delivered. For what Nature is to God, that is Literature unto the Soul. God ever strives to reveal himself in Nature through its manifold changes and developing forms. And the human... more...

THE PHANTOM SCIMITAR I was not the only passenger aboard the S.S. Mandalay who perceived the disturbance and wondered what it might portend and from whence proceed. A goodly number of passengers were joining the ship at Port Said. I was lounging against the rail, pipe in mouth, lazily wondering, with a large vagueness. What a heterogeneous rabble it was!—a brightly coloured rabble, but the colours... more...