DUST In the dull hot dusk of a summer's day a green touring-car, swinging out of the East Drive, pulled up smartly, trembling, at the edge of the Fifty-ninth Street car-tracks, then more sedately, under the dispassionate but watchful eye of a mounted member of the Traffic Squad, lurched across the Plaza and merged itself in the press of vehicles south-bound on the Avenue. Its tonneau held four... more...

THE LAST ORACLE (A.D. 361)Years have risen and fallen in darkness or in twilight,   Ages waxed and waned that knew not thee nor thine,While the world sought light by night and sought not thy light,   Since the sad last pilgrim left thy dark mid shrine.Dark the shrine and dumb the fount of song thence welling,   Save for words more sad than tears of blood, that said: Tell the king, on earth has... more...

CHAPTER THE FIRST. hree birds of very favourable repute in these regions met together one evening—a Thrush, a Lark, and a Nightingale. And all for what purpose, think you? It was a queer one—to hold a solemn conference about a Dewdrop! Yes, it must be allowed it was an original thought which brought these three feathered friends thus into council; and a pretty talk to be sure they had about it.... more...

RENAISSANCE PANELS FROM PERUGIA. The carved walnut panels from the choir stalls of the Church of San Pietro de' Casinense in Perugia, designed by Stefano da Bergamo in 1535, which are given as illustrations in this number, are excellent examples of the ornament of the later period of the Italian Renaissance. This form of ornament was first used in flat painted panels upon pilasters, such as the... more...

I. THE LAND OF EGYPT. In shape Egypt is like a lily with a crooked stem. A broad blossom terminates it at its upper end; a button of a bud projects from the stalk a little below the blossom, on the left-hand side. The broad blossom is the Delta, extending from Aboosir to Tineh, a direct distance of a hundred and eighty miles, which the projection of the coast—the graceful swell of the... more...

CHAPTER I. The conquest of South Africa is one of the most curious episodes in English history. Begun through purely mercenary motives, it yet acquired a character of grandeur which, as time went on, divested it of all sordid and unworthy suspicions. South Africa has certainly been the land of adventurers, and many of them found there either fame or disgrace, unheard-of riches or the most abject... more...

CAIN'S BRAND I.—ON THE MOOR. CAIN'S BRAND! that is no fact of the far past, no legend of the Middle Ages, for are there not Cains among us; white-faced, haggard-featured Cains to the last? Men who began with a little injury, and did not dream that their gripe would close in deadly persecution? Cains who slew the spirit, and through the spirit murdered the body? Cains unintentionally, whom... more...

CHAPTER I. THE ENGLISH MISUNDERSTANDING. Whatever may be the ultimate verdict of history upon the long struggle of the majority of the Irish people for self-government, the picture of a small country with large aspirations giving of its best unstintingly to the world, while gaining for itself little beyond sympathy, will appeal to the imagination of future ages long after the Irish Question, as we know... more...

THE WIDOW'S TAVERN The morning of that day—it was a Tuesday of the Lenten season—could not have dawned more promisingly. The sea, off the Cabañal, was in flat calm, as smooth as a polished mirror. Not the slightest ripple broke the shimmering triangular wake that the sun sent shoreward over the lifeless surface of the water. The fishing fleet had headed, bright and early, for the grounds off... more...

RAILWAY-ENGINEERING IN THE UNITED STATES.[1] Though our country can boast of no Watt, Brindley, Smeaton, Rennie, Telford, Brunel, Stephenson, or Fairbairn, and lacks such experimenters as Tredgold, Barlow, Hodgkinson, and Clark, yet we have our Evans and Fulton, our Whistler, Latrobe, Roebling, Haupt, Ellet, Adams, and Morris,—engineers who yield to none in professional skill, and whose work will... more...