During the war of 1812-14, between Great Britain and the United States, the weak Spanish Governor of Florida–for Florida was then Spanish territory–permitted the British to make Pensacola their base of operations against us. This was a gross outrage, as we were at peace with Spain at the time, and General Jackson, acting on his […]

When Louis XIV. was King of France, that country was generally Catholic, as it is still, but in the rugged mountain region called the Cevennes more than half the people were Protestants. At first the king consented that these Protestant people, who were well behaved both in peace and in war, should live in quiet, […]

THE CURIOUS STORY OF VLADIMIR THE GREAT. In the latter part of the tenth century Sviatozlaf was Grand Prince of Russia. He was a powerful prince, but a turbulent one, and he behaved so ill towards his neighbors that, when an opportunity offered, one of them converted his skull into a gold-mounted drinking-cup, with an […]

The smallest naval battle ever fought in the world, perhaps, occurred on the Alabama River on the 13th of November, 1813, between two canoes, and this is the way in which it happened. The United States were at war with Great Britain at that time, and a war with Spain was also threatened. The British […]

HOW GENERAL JACKSON RECEIVED THE BRITISH. When the British succeeded in taking Lieutenant Jones’s little gun-boats and making a landing, after the manner described in the preceding story, they supposed that the hardest part of their work was done. It was not far from their landing-place to New Orleans, and there was nothing in their […]

HOW THE PARTISAN WARFARE IN THE CAROLINAS WAS BEGUN. When the British marched up from Savannah and took Charleston, in the spring of 1780, they thought the Revolution was at an end in the Southern States, and it really seemed so. Even the patriots thought it was useless to resist any longer, and so when […]

London took a holiday on the 16th of July, 1377. There were processions of merry-makers in the streets, and the windows were crowded with gayly dressed men, women, and children. The great lords, glittering in armor, and mounted upon splendid steel-clad horses, marched through the town. The bishops and clergymen in gorgeous robes made a […]

HOW THE CITY OF REFUGE FOUGHT FOR LIBERTY. In the old times, when people were in the habit of fighting each other about their religion, the little French seaport Rochelle was called “the city of refuge.” The Huguenots, or French Protestants, held the place, and when the armies of the French king tried to take […]

Philip van Artevelde was a Dutchman. His father, Jacob, had been Governor of Ghent, and had made himself a great name by leading a revolt against the Count of Flanders, and driving that tyrant out of the country on one occasion. Philip was a quiet man, who attended to his own affairs and took no […]

TWO SHIPLOADS OF SWEETHEARTS AND THE PRICES PAID FOR THEM. The first English settlement in America that came to anything was made in the most absurd way possible. A great company of London merchants set about the work of planting an English colony in Virginia, and they were very much in earnest about it too; […]

Peter the Great, the emperor who, in a few years, changed Russia from a country of half-savage tribes into a great European nation, was one day visiting one of his officers, and saw in his house a young girl, who attracted his attention by her beauty and her graceful manners. This girl was a prisoner […]

THE STORY OF A PERILOUS JOURNEY. No man ever lived whose name is more honored than that of George Washington, and no man ever deserved his fame more. All the success that ever came to him was won by hard work. He succeeded because he was the kind of man that he was, and not […]

Nearly all the countries in Europe were making war upon France in 1795. The French people had set up a republic, and all the kingdoms round about were trying to make them submit to a king again. This had been going on for several years, and sometimes it looked as though the French would be […]

AN INCIDENT OF THE CREEK WAR. A terrible bit of news was carried from mouth to mouth through the region that is now Alabama at the beginning of September, 1813. The country was at that time in the midst of the second war with Great Britain, and for a long time British agents had been […]

When Michael Angelo was twelve years of age, although he had had no instruction in art, he did a piece of work which greatly pleased the painter Domenico Ghirlandajo. That artist at once declared that here was lad of genius, who must quit his school studies and become a painter. This was what the little […]

Boys and girls who can buy attractive periodicals and books at any bookstore or news-stand, can have very little notion of the difficulty that little folk had seventy or eighty years ago in getting something to read. It was only about fifty years ago, indeed, that this first efforts were made to supply cheap, instructive, […]

In the little Italian village of Possagno there lived a jolly stone-cutter named Pisano. He was poor, of course, or he would not have been a stone-cutter; but he was full of good humor, and everybody liked him. There was one little boy, especially, who loved old Pisano, and whom old Pisano loved more than […]

THE BOYHOOD OF DANIEL WEBSTER.[A] [A] For some of the materials used in this sketch I am indebted to the work entitled “The Boyhood of Great Men,” by John G. Edgar, published by Messrs. Harper & Brothers. Daniel Webster, the great statesman, orator, and lawyer, was born on the 18th of January, 1782. His father […]

Precisely at what time the faithful and affectionate subjects of his Majesty Ivan IV., Czar of all the Russias, conferred upon him his pet name, “The Terrible,” history neglects to inform us, but we are left in no uncertainty as to the entire appropriateness of the title, which is now inseparably linked with his baptismal […]

His name was Dmitri, and he was hereditary Grand-Prince of all the Russias, being the son of Ivan the Terrible, and only surviving brother of Feodor, the childless successor of that blood-thirsty czar. He was carefully killed in the presence of witnesses, during his boyhood, and duly buried, with honors appropriate to his station in […]