I Above the Schweizerhof Hotel, and at the end of the long walk fronting the lake at Lucerne,–the walk studded with the round, dumpy, Noah’s-ark trees,–stands a great building surrounded by flowers and palms, and at night ablaze with hundreds of lamps hung in festoons of blue, yellow, and red. This is the Casino. On […]

I was sitting in the shadow of Mme. Poulard’s delightful inn at St. Michel when I first saw Baeader. Dinner had been served, and I had helped to pay for my portion by tacking a sketch on the wall behind the chair of the hostess. This high valuation was not intended as a special compliment […]

[The outlines of this story were given me by my friend Augustus Thomas, whose plays are but an index to the tenderness of his own nature.] He came from up the railroad near the State line. Sanders was the name on the pay-roll,–John Sanders, laborer. There was nothing remarkable about him. He was like a […]

It was in the smoking-room of a Cunarder two days out. The evening had been spent in telling stories, the fresh-air passengers crowding the doorways to listen, the habitual loungers and card-players abandoning their books and games. When my turn came,–mine was a story of Venice, a story of the old palace of the Barbarozzi,–I […]

I I found the major standing in front of Delmonico’s, interviewing a large, bare-headed personage in brown cloth spotted with brass buttons. The major was in search of his very particular friend, Mr. John Hardy of Madison Square, and the personage in brown and brass was rather languidly indicating, by a limp and indecisive forefinger, […]

I first saw Brockway’s towards the close of a cold October day. Since early morning I had been tramping and sketching about the northern suburbs of New York, and it was late in the afternoon when I reached the edge of that high ground overlooking the two rivers. I could see through an opening in […]

Do not tell me dogs cannot talk. I know better. I saw it all myself. It was at Sterzing, that most picturesque of all the Tyrolean villages on the Italian slope of the Brenner, with its long, single street, zigzagged like a straggling path in the snow,–perhaps it was laid out in that way,–and its […]

Hidden in our memories there are quaint, quiet nooks tucked away at the end of leafy lanes; still streams overhung with feathery foliage; gray rocks lichen-covered; low-ground meadows, knee-deep in lush grass; restful, lazy lakes dotted with pond-lilies; great, wide-spreading trees, their arms uplifted in song, their leaves quivering with the melody. I say there […]

He was so ugly,–outside, I mean: long and lank, flat-chested, shrunken, round-shouldered, stooping when he walked; body like a plank, arms and legs like split rails, feet immense, hands like paddles, head set on a neck scrawny as a picked chicken’s, hair badly put on and in patches, some about his head, some around his […]

I THE CRIME OF SAMANTHY NORTH I have been requested to tell this story, and exactly as it happened. The moral any man may draw for himself. I only want to ask my readers the question I have been asking myself ever since I saw the girl: Why should such things be among us? * […]

Jim met me at the station. I knew it was Jim when I caught sight of him loping along the platform, craning his neck, his head on one side as if in search of someone. He had the same stoop in his shoulders; the same long, disjointed, shambling body–six feet and more of it–that had […]

I The man was a little sawed-off, red-headed Irishman, with twinkling, gimlet eyes, two up-curved lips always in a broad smile, and a pair of thin, caliper-shaped legs. His name was as brief as his stature. “Fin, your honor, by the grace of God. F-i-n, Fin. There was a ‘Mac’ in front of it once, […]

It was in the Doctor’s own office that he told me this story. He has told me a dozen more, all pulled from the rag-bag of his experience, like strands of worsted from an old-fashioned reticule. Some were bright-colored, some were gray and dull–some black; most of them, in fact, sombre in tone, for the […]

I This all happened on the banks of the Seine, above St. Cloud–above Suresne, in fact, or rather its bridge–the new one that has pieced out the old one with the quaint stone arches that we love. A silver-gray haze, a pure French gray, hung over the river, softening the sky-line of the near-by hills, […]

Captain Bob Brandt dropped in to-day, looking brown and ruddy, and filling my office with, a breeze and freshness that seemed to have followed him all the way in from the sea. “Just in, Captain?” I cried, springing to my feet, my fingers closing round his–no more welcome visitor than Captain Bob ever pushes open […]

Jack Waldo stood in his studio gazing up at the ceiling, or, to be more exact, at a Venetian church-lamp–which he had just hung and to which he had just attached a red silk tassel bought that morning of a bric-a-brac dealer whose shop was in the next street. There was a bare spot in […]

My friend Muffles has had a varied career. Muffles is not his baptismal name–if he were ever baptized, which I doubt. The butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker, and the brewer–especially the brewer–knew him as Mr. Richard Mulford, proprietor of the Shady Side on the Bronx–and his associates as Dick. Only his intimates knew him […]

If you know the St. Nicholas–and if you don’t you should make its acquaintance at once–you won’t breakfast upstairs in that gorgeous room overlooking the street where immaculate, smilelees waiters move noiselessly about, limp palms droop in the corners, and the tables are lighted with imitation wax candles burning electric wicks hooded by ruby-colored shades, […]

It was on the Limited: 10.30 Night Express out of Louisville, bound south to Nashville and beyond. I had lower Four. When I entered the sleeper the porter was making up the berths, the passengers sitting about in each other’s way until their beds were ready. I laid my bag on an empty seat, threw […]

He was looking through a hole–a square hole, framed about with mahogany and ground glass. His face was red, his eyes were black, his mustache–waxed to two needle-points–was a yellowish brown; his necktie blue and his uniform dark chocolate seamed with little threads of vermilion and incrusted with silver poker-chip buttons emblazoned with the initials […]