Christmas! What worldly care could ever lessen the joy of that eventful day? At your first waking in the morning, when you lie gazing in drowsy listlessness at the brass ornament on your bed-tester, when the ring of the milkman is like a dream, and the cries of the bread-man and newspaper-boy sound far off […]

The Prelude. “Twenty-nine dollars! Very well, Mr. John Redfield: I think you have cut your allowance a little low. With bracelets, bonbons, and other gewgaws for your interesting friends, I must say your enjoyment of this prospective Twenty-fifth of December is somewhat reduced. When a man has skated over the frozen surface of society a […]

It was a dirty, grasping little office, vile enough to have been built by the Evil One; and the occupant was a dirty, grasping little man, cruel enough to have been made out of its scraps. It was a hard, remorseless little door, that took in a visitor at a gulp and closed after him […]

Leaf the First. When a man whom you have every reason to believe not only the coolest, but the most unimpressible, of beings, suddenly turns white as a ghost and shivers with a nervous spasm, it is safe to suppose he is frightened. But when terror, turning into rage, changes one of the most attentive […]

[A] J. Moses Butterby, aged 40 years; a licensed broker; nativity, American; temperament, sanguine; habit, slightly obese; constitution, robust. History of the case as related by himself. * * * * * I don’t see how I ever came to be married. It was certainly the last thing my friends expected of me, and it […]

A Sketch of Rio de Janeiro. CHAPTER I. The sun was setting on the Passeio Publico. On one side the fading light gilded the delicate green of the palms, and on the other it shimmered on the placid waters of the bay. It whitened the little lodges, nestling in the luxuriance of foliage, and glistened […]