It was a warm afternoon in the early spring, and the air in the office was close and heavy. The letters of the morning had been answered and the proofs corrected, and the gentlemen who had come with ideas worth one column at space rates, and which they thought worth three, had compromised with the […]

It was at the end of the first act of the first night of “The Sultana,” and every member of the Lester Comic Opera Company, from Lester himself down to the wardrobe woman’s son, who would have had to work if his mother lost her place, was sick with anxiety. There is perhaps only one […]

The Old Time Journalist will tell you that the best reporter is the one who works his way up. He holds that the only way to start is as a printer’s devil or as an office boy, to learn in time to set type, to graduate from a compositor into a stenographer, and as a […]

Young Van Bibber broke one of his rules of life one day and came down-town. This unusual journey into the marts of trade and finance was in response to a call from his lawyer, who wanted his signature to some papers. It was five years since Van Bibber had been south of the north side […]

Van Bibber’s man Walters was the envy and admiration of his friends. He was English, of course, and he had been trained in the household of the Marquis Bendinot, and had travelled, in his younger days, as the valet of young Lord Upton. He was now rather well on in years, although it would have […]

The day was cruelly hot, with unwarranted gusts of wind which swept the red dust in fierce eddies in at one end of Main Street and out at the other, and waltzed fantastically across the prairie. When they had passed, human beings opened their eyes again to blink hopelessly at the white sun, and swore […]

Young Van Bibber had been staying with some people at Southampton, L. I., where, the fall before, his friend Travers made his reputation as a cross-country rider. He did this, it may be remembered, by shutting his eyes and holding on by the horse’s mane and letting the horse go as it pleased. His recklessness […]

Prentiss had a long lease on the house, and because it stood in Jermyn Street the upper floors were, as a matter of course, turned into lodgings for single gentlemen; and because Prentiss was a Florist to the Queen, he placed a lion and unicorn over his flower-shop, just in front of the middle window […]

There were four rails around the ship’s sides, the three lower ones of iron and the one on top of wood, and as he looked between them from the canvas cot he recognized them as the prison-bars which held him in. Outside his prison lay a stretch of blinding blue water which ended in a […]

A SKETCH CONTAINING THREE POINTS OF VIEW What the Poet Laureate wrote. “There are girls in the Gold Reef City, There are mothers and children too! And they cry ‘Hurry up for pity!’ So what can a brave man do? “I suppose we were wrong, were mad men, Still I think at the Judgment Day, […]

This is a true story of a search for buried treasure. The only part that is not true is the name of the man with whom I searched for the treasure. Unless I keep his name out of it he will not let me write the story, and, as it was his expedition and as […]

When Ainsley first moved to Lone Lake Farm all of his friends asked him the same question. They wanted to know, if the farmer who sold it to him had abandoned it as worthless, how one of the idle rich, who could not distinguish a plough from a harrow, hoped to make it pay? His […]

My going to Valencia was entirely an accident. But the more often I stated that fact, the more satisfied was everyone at the capital that I had come on some secret mission. Even the venerable politician who acted as our minister, the night of my arrival, after dinner, said confidentially, “Now, Mr. Crosby, between ourselves, […]

Of the school of earnest young writers at whom the word muckraker had been thrown in opprobrium, and by whom it had been caught up as a title of honor, Everett was among the younger and less conspicuous. But, if in his skirmishes with graft and corruption he had failed to correct the evils he […]

The scout stood where three roads cut three green tunnels in the pine woods, and met at his feet. Above his head an aged sign-post pointed impartially to East Carver, South Carver, and Carver Centre, and left the choice to him. The scout scowled and bit nervously at his gauntlet. The choice was difficult, and […]

When its turn came, the private secretary, somewhat apologetically, laid the letter in front of the Wisest Man in Wall Street. “From Mrs. Austin, probation officer, Court of General Sessions,” he explained. “Wants a letter about Spear. He’s been convicted of theft. Comes up for sentence Tuesday.” “Spear?” repeated Arnold Thorndike. “Young fellow, stenographer, used […]

Young Van Bibber had never spent a Fourth of July in the city, as he had always understood it was given over to armies of small boys on that day, who sat on all the curbstones and set off fire-crackers, and that the thermometer always showed ninety degrees in the shade, and cannon boomed and […]

Of course, Van Bibber lost all the money he saved at the races on the Fourth of July. He went to the track the next day, and he saw the whole sum melt away, and in his vexation tried to “get back,” with the usual result. He plunged desperately, and when he had reached his […]

Miss Eleanore Cuyler had dined alone with her mother that night, and she was now sitting in the drawing-room, near the open fire, with her gloves and fan on the divan beside her, for she was going out later to a dance. She was reading a somewhat weighty German review, and the contrast which the […]

Young Travers, who had been engaged to a girl down on Long Island for the last three months, only met her father and brother a few weeks before the day set for the wedding. The brother is a master of hounds near Southampton, and shared the expense of importing a pack from England with Van […]