long long time ago, there lived in a quiet spot, a young man and his wife. They had one child, a little daughter, whom they both loved with all their hearts. I cannot tell you their names, for they have been long since forgotten, but the name of the place where they lived was Matsuyama, in the province of Echigo. It happened once, while the little girl was still a baby, that the father was obliged to... more...

obody at Hoskins, Haskell & Chapman, Incorporated, knew jut why Lucilla Brown, G.G. Hoskins' secretary, came to work half an hour early every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Even G.G. himself, had he been asked, would have had trouble explaining how his occasional exasperated wish that just once somebody would reach the office ahead of him could have caused his attractive young secretary to... more...

Savagely cursing, Luke Fenton reeled backward from the porthole, his great hairy paws clapped over his eyes. No one had warned him, and he did not know that total blindness might result from gazing too earnestly into the sun's unscreened flaming orb, especially with that body not more than twenty million miles distant in space. He did not know, in fact, that the ethership was that close: Luke had... more...

When the discovery was announced, it was Dr. Chauncey Patrick Coffin who announced it. He had, of course, arranged with uncanny skill to take most of the credit for himself. If it turned out to be greater than he had hoped, so much the better. His presentation was scheduled for the last night of the American College of Clinical Practitioners' annual meeting, and Coffin had fully intended it to be... more...

CHAPTER I THE BOBBSEY TWINS AT HOME The Bobbsey twins were very busy that morning. They were all seated around the dining-room table, making houses and furnishing them. The houses were being made out of pasteboard shoe boxes, and had square holes cut in them for doors, and other long holes for windows, and had pasteboard chairs and tables, and bits of dress goods for carpets and rugs, and bits of... more...

LONDON CHILDREN To begin with, the streets of London are not paved with gold; but I need not have said that, for nowadays the very youngest child knows it. It was Dick Whittington who first imagined anything so foolish; but then he was only a country lad, and in his days there were not the same opportunities for finding out the truth about things as there are now. There were very few books for one... more...

A GREAT STREAK OF LUCK “Anybody home?” “Sure, walk right in, Toby. My latch-string is always out to my chums. I see you managed to pick up Steve on the way across; but I wager you had really to pry him loose from that dandy new volume on travel he was telling me about, because he’s such a bookworm.” The two boys who hastened to accept this warm invitation, and enter Jack Winters’ snug... more...

Chapter the First     I Am Born and Begin to Take Notice—John Quincy Adams and Andrew    Jackson—James K. Polk and Franklin Pierce—Jack Dade and "Beau    Hickman"—Old Times in Washington I I am asked to jot down a few autobiographic odds and ends from such data of record and memory as I may retain. I have been something of a student of life; an observer of men and women and... more...

I War, war, war. For me the beginning of the war was a torchlight tattoo on Salisbury Plain. It was held on one of those breathless evenings in July when the peace of Europe was trembling in the balance, and when most of us had a heartache in case—in case England, at this time of internal crisis, did not rise to the supreme sacrifice. It was just the night for a tattoo—dark and warm and still. Away... more...

MONSIEUR PARENT George's father was sitting in an iron chair, watching his little son with concentrated affection and attention, as little George piled up the sand into heaps during one of their walks. He would take up the sand with both hands, make a mound of it, and put a chestnut leaf on top. His father saw no one but him in that public park full of people. The sun was just disappearing behind... more...