CHAPTER I. HOW TO MAKE A LAWN. A smooth lawn is a great attraction of itself, even if there is not a tree or shrub upon it. When it is once made, a lawn is easily kept in order, yet we seldom see a good one. There are three things to be taken into consideration in securing a fine lawn. First, location; Second, quality of the soil; Third, the kinds of seed to be sown. This is the most important matter... more...

CHAPTER I. ALMOST A RIOT. No, it was not an earthquake that happened in the city of Los Angeles, California, on that beautiful sun-shiny morning. It was just a tow-headed, cross-eyed youth shaking things up at the corner of Sixth and Main in an attempt to find his father. And not one corner of the cross streets was involved, but all four corners. The upheaval that followed this search for a missing... more...

CHAPTER I It was spring, thousands of years ago. Little boys snatched the April violets, and with them painted purple stripes upon their arms and faces. Then they played that enemies came. "Be afraid!" shouted one, frowning; and he stamped his foot and shook his fist at the play enemies. "I am fine!" called the other; and he held his head high, and took big steps, and looked this way... more...

INTRODUCTION As a rule, books of etiquette are written from the standpoint of the ultra-fashionable circle. They give large space to the details of behavior on occasions of extreme conventionality, and describe minutely the conduct proper on state occasions. But the majority in every town and village are people of moderate means and quiet habits of living, to whom the extreme formalities of the world... more...

PUBLIC APPEAL. To the President and Fellows and Board of Overseers of Harvard University: Gentlemen,—Believing it to be a necessary part of good citizenship to defend one's reputation against unjustifiable attacks, and believing you to have been unwarrantably, but not remotely, implicated in an unjustifiable attack upon my own reputation by Assistant Professor Josiah Royce, since his attack is... more...

A RHAPSODY ON THE NOBLE PROFESSION OF NOVEL READING It must have been at about the good-bye age of forty that Thomas Moore, that choleric and pompous yet genial little Irish gentleman, turned a sigh into good marketable "copy" for Grub Street and with shrewd economy got two full pecuniary bites out of one melancholy apple of reflection:   "Kind friends around me fall  Like leaves in... more...

The fiery disk of the sun was just lifting above the shoulder of hills that held the city of Stenton when the Greenstream stage rolled briskly from its depot, a dingy frame tavern, and commenced the long journey to its high destination. The tavern was on the outskirts of town; beyond, a broad, level plain reached to a shimmering blue silhouette of mountains printed on a silvery sky; and the stage... more...

CHAPTER I MERRY TIMES PROMISED Little Rose Atherton sat on the lower step of the three broad ones that led down from the piazza, and she wondered if there were, in all the world, a lovelier spot than Avondale. "And we live in the finest part of Avondale," she said, continuing her thoughts aloud. "Tho' wherever Uncle John is, seems better than anywhere else." She had spent the... more...

FUNERAL ORATION. 1. If I thought it were possible, O fellow-citizens who are assembled at this burial-place, to set forth in words the valor of those who lie here, I should blame the men who invited me to speak about them at a few days' notice. But as all time would not be sufficient for (the combined efforts) of all men to prepare an address adequate to their deeds, the city seems to me, in... more...

PREFACE "Of making many books there is no end."—Eccles. 12:12. When the above words were written by Solomon, King of Israel, about three thousand years ago, they were possibly inspired by the existence even at that early period of an extensive and probably overweighted literature. The same literary conditions are as true to-day as when the above truism emanated from that most wonderful of all... more...