PREFACE The sense of difficulty, and indeed of awe, with which a scholar approaches the task of translating the Agamemnon depends directly on its greatness as poetry. It is in part a matter of diction. The language of Aeschylus is an extraordinary thing, the syntax stiff and simple, the vocabulary obscure, unexpected, and steeped in splendour. Its peculiarities cannot be disregarded, or the translation... more...

HER TRUTHFULNESS. "Behold, Thou requirest truth in the inward parts."—Psalm li. 6. We stand to-day like men who have just watched a great sunset. On some beautiful summer evening we must all of us have watched a sunset, and we know how, first of all, we see the great orb slowly decline towards the horizon; then comes the sense of coming loss; then it sets amid a blaze of glory, and then it is... more...

I PLAN A VOYAGE By the bequest of an elder brother, I was left enough money to see me through a small college in Ohio, and to secure me four years in a medical school in the East. Why I chose medicine I hardly know. Possibly the career of a surgeon attracted the adventurous element in me. Perhaps, coming of a family of doctors, I merely followed the line of least resistance. It may be, indirectly but... more...

My father, after meeting with a severe reverse of fortune, dies, and my sisters and I are left destitute.—Our faithful old black nurse Mammy, takes care of my sisters, while I, invited by a former acquaintance, Captain Willis of the “Chieftain,” sail with him on a trading voyage to the coast of Africa. Our school was breaking up for the midsummer holidays—north, south, east, and west we sped to... more...

INTRODUCTORY. On the last day of May 1902 the signature at Pretoria of the conditions of peace brought to an end a war which had lasted for nearly three years, and had among other things destroyed a government, dissolved a society, and laid waste a country. In those last months of fighting some progress had been made with the reconstruction—at least with that not unimportant branch of it which is... more...

CHAPTER I: PRELIMINARY Since it was the British complications with Persia which mainly furnished what pretext there was for the invasion of Afghanistan by an Anglo-Indian army in 1839, some brief recital is necessary of the relations between Great Britain and Persia prior to that aggression. By a treaty, concluded between England and Persia in 1814, the former state bound itself, in case of the... more...

THEAFFECTIONATE SHEPHEARD. THE TEARES OF AN AFFECTIONATE SHEPHEARD SICKE FOR LOVE,OR THE COMPLAINT OF DAPHNIS FOR THELOVE OF GANIMEDE.Scarce had the morning starre hid from the lightHeavens crimson canopie with stars bespangled,But I began to rue th' unhappy sightOf that faire boy that had my hart intangled;Cursing the time, the place, the sense, the sin;I came, I saw, I viewd, I slipped in.If it... more...

The calamitous circumstance of having been condemned to death by the laws of his country, for the most hateful of all crimes; and his most extraordinary deliverance from an ignominious fate, and being restored to liberty unconditionally and free! will naturally render the case of Thomas Daniels a subject of eager curiosity and warm debate. That persons in the superior stations of life should sometimes... more...

CHAPTER I Off to the Rendezvous Hawk Carse himself goes to keep Judd the Kite's rendezvous with the sinister genius Ku Sui. Though it is seldom nowadays that Earthmen hear mention of Hawk Carse, there are still places in the universe where his name retains all its old magic. These are the lonely outposts of the farthest planets, and here when the outlanders gather to yarn the idle hours away their... more...

THE WOLF AND THE KID There was once a little Kid whose growing horns made him think he was a grown-up Billy Goat and able to take care of himself. So one evening when the flock started home from the pasture and his mother called, the Kid paid no heed and kept right on nibbling the tender grass. A little later when he lifted his head, the flock was gone. He was all alone. The sun was sinking. Long... more...