“Where did you get him?” said the Principal. “In the back yard of one of those double-deckers down by the river,” answered the Truant Officer. “Ain’t he the bird!” he added in professional enthusiasm. “I’ve been chasing him for two or three days. He’s just about as easy to handle as an eel, and to-day […]

Everett Hilgarde was conscious that the man in the seat across the aisle was looking at him intently. He was a large, florid man, wore a conspicuous diamond solitaire upon his third finger, and Everett judged him to be a traveling salesman of some sort. He had the air of an adaptable fellow who had […]

MY friend Peyton was what is called a “fine, generous fellow.” He valued money only as a means of obtaining what he desired, and was always ready to spend it with an acquaintance for mutual gratification. Of course, he was a general favourite. Every one spoke well of him, and few hesitated to give his […]

“A MAD WORLD, MY MASTERS.” {12} Footnote: {12} Fraser’s Magazine, No. CCCXXXVII. 1858. The cholera, as was to be expected, has reappeared in England again; and England, as was to be expected, has taken no sufficient steps towards meeting it; so that if, as seems but too probable, the plague should spread next summer, we […]

Mrs. Jennings (or Jinnins, as the neighbours would have it) ruled absolutely at home, when she took so much trouble as to do anything at all there–which was less often than might have been. As for Robert her husband, he was a poor stick, said the neighbours. And yet he was a man with enough […]

A hot, breathless, blinding sunrise–the sun having appeared suddenly above the ragged edge of the barren scrub like a great disc of molten steel. No hint of a morning breeze before it, no sign on earth or sky to show that it is morning–save the position of the sun. A clearing in the scrub–bare as […]

The scene is a drawing-room (in which the men are allowed to smoke–or a smoking-room in which the women are allowed to draw–it doesn’t much matter) in the house of somebody or other in the country. George Turnbull and his old College friend, Henry Peterson, are confiding in each other, as old friends will, over […]

1891 It was his greatest pride in life that he had been a soldier–a soldier of the empire. (He was known simply as “The Soldier,” and it is probable that there was not a man or woman, and certain that there was not a child in the Quarter who did not know him: the tall, […]

Old Gunter was going home t’other night with a very heavy “turkey on”–about a forty-four pounder. Gunter accused the pavements of being icy, and down he came– kerchug! A “young lady” coming along, fidgetting and finiking, she made a very sudden and opposite ricochet, on seeing Gunter feeling the ground, and making abortive attempts to […]

A grand affair of a ball–the Pioneers’–came off at the Occidental some time ago. The following notes of the costumes worn by the belles of the occasion may not be uninteresting to the general reader, and Jerkins may get an idea therefrom: Mrs. W. M. was attired in an elegant ‘pate de foie gras,’ made […]

“Here comes Captain Bogart–we’ll ask him,” said the talkative man. His listeners were grouped about one of the small tables in the smoking-room of the Moldavia, five days out. The question was when the master of a vessel should leave his ship. In the incident discussed every man had gone ashore–even the life-saving crew had […]

I There are certain people who will never understand this story, people who live their lives by rule of thumb. Little lives they are, too, measured by the letter and not the spirit. Quite simple too. Right is right and wrong is wrong. That shadowy No Man’s Land between the trenches of virtue and sin, […]

The stage is in semi-darkness as Dick Trayle throws open the window from outside, puts his knee on the sill, and falls carefully into the drawing-room of Beeste Hall. He is dressed in a knickerbocker suit with arrows on it (such as can always be borrowed from a friend), and, to judge from the noises […]

“Miss Bailey,” said Miss Blake, entering Room 18 during the lunch hour of a day in January, shortly after school had recovered from the Christmas holidays, “might I come in for a few moments this afternoon to observe your children? I suppose I shall be having them next term. Too bad you first-grade teachers never […]

This is a sketch of one of the many ways in which a young married woman, who is naturally thick-skinned and selfish–as most women are–and who thinks she loves her husband, can spoil his life because he happens to be good-natured, generous, sensitive, weak or soft, whichever you like to call it. Johnson went out […]

Opposite the entrance to the Sevres Museum in the old town of Sevres, in France, stands a handsome bronze statue of Bernard Palissy, the potter. Within the museum are some exquisite pieces of pottery known as “Palissy ware.” They are specimens of the art of Palissy, who spent the best years of his life toiling […]

“BETHINK YOURSELVES!” “This is your hour, and the power of darkness.”–Luke xxii. 53. I Again war. Again sufferings, necessary to nobody, utterly uncalled for; again fraud; again the universal stupefaction and brutalization of men. Men who are separated from each other by thousands of miles, hundreds of thousands of such men (on the one hand–Buddhists, […]

I It was nearly midnight of Christmas Eve on Oakland Plantation. In the library of the great house a dim lamp burned, and here, in a big arm-chair before a waning fire, Evelyn Bruce, a fair young girl, sat earnestly talking to a withered old black woman, who sat on the rug at her feet. […]

PROLOGUE Old Abel Albury had a genius for getting the bull by the tail with a tight grip, and holding on with both hands and an obstinacy born of ignorance–and not necessarily for the sake of self-preservation or selfishness–while all the time the bull might be, so to speak, rooting up life-long friendships and neighbourly […]

The day was fine, and the breeze so light that the old patched sails were taking the schooner along at a gentle three knots per hour. A sail or two shone like snow in the offing, and a gull hovered in the air astern. From the cabin to the galley, and from the galley to […]