CHAPTER I “They are very pretty, some of them,” said the Woman of the World; “not the sort of letters I should have written myself.” “I should like to see a love-letter of yours,” interrupted the Minor Poet. “It is very kind of you to say so,” replied the Woman of the World. “It never […]

“Kindness,” argued little Mrs. Pennycoop, “costs nothing.” “And, speaking generally, my dear, is valued precisely at cost price,” retorted Mr. Pennycoop, who, as an auctioneer of twenty years’ experience, had enjoyed much opportunity of testing the attitude of the public towards sentiment. “I don’t care what you say, George,” persisted his wife; “he may be […]

There are two kinds of clocks. There is the clock that is always wrong, and that knows it is wrong, and glories in it; and there is the clock that is always right–except when you rely upon it, and then it is more wrong than you would think a clock could be in a civilized […]

Always he remembered her as he saw her first: the little spiritual face, the little brown shoes pointed downwards, their toes just touching the ground; the little fawn gloves folded upon her lap. He was not conscious of having noticed her with any particular attention: a plainly dressed, childish-looking figure alone on a seat between […]

THE PREFACE. The Doctor never did believe this story, but claims for it that, to a great extent, it has altered his whole outlook on life. “Of course, what actually happened–what took place under my own nose,” continued the Doctor, “I do not dispute. And then there is the case of Mrs. Marigold. That was […]

I had turned off from the Edgware Road into a street leading west, the atmosphere of which had appealed to me. It was a place of quiet houses standing behind little gardens. They had the usual names printed on the stuccoed gateposts. The fading twilight was just sufficient to enable one to read them. There […]

The evidence of the park-keeper, David Bristow, of Gilder Street, Camden Town, is as follows: I was on duty in St. James’s Park on Thursday evening, my sphere extending from the Mall to the northern shore of the ornamental water east of the suspension bridge. At five-and-twenty to seven I took up a position between […]

Old Ab Herrick, so most people called him. Not that he was actually old; the term was an expression of liking rather than any reflection on his years. He lived in an old-fashioned house–old-fashioned, that is, for New York–on the south side of West Twentieth Street: once upon a time, but that was long ago, […]

Perhaps of all, it troubled most the Herr Pfarrer. Was he not the father of the village? And as such did it not fall to him to see his children marry well and suitably? marry in any case. It was the duty of every worthy citizen to keep alive throughout the ages the sacred hearth […]

I fear I must be of a somewhat gruesome turn of mind. My sympathies are always with the melancholy side of life and nature. I love the chill October days, when the brown leaves lie thick and sodden underneath your feet, and a low sound as of stifled sobbing is heard in the damp woods–the […]

This story is about a shop: many stories are. One Sunday evening this Bishop had to preach a sermon at St. Paul’s Cathedral. The occasion was a very special and important one, and every God-fearing newspaper in the kingdom sent its own special representative to report the proceedings. Now, of the three reporters thus commissioned, […]

“I do mean it,” declared Mrs. Korner, “I like a man to be a man.” “But you would not like Christopher–I mean Mr. Korner–to be that sort of man,” suggested her bosom friend. “I don’t mean that I should like it if he did it often. But I should like to feel that he was […]

A STORY OF OLD LONDON, IN TWO CHAPTERS CHAPTER I. If you take the Underground Railway to Whitechapel Road (the East station), and from there take one of the yellow tramcars that start from that point, and go down the Commercial Road, past the George, in front of which starts–or used to stand–a high flagstaff, […]

Wild-reindeer stalking is hardly so exciting a sport as the evening’s verandah talk in Norroway hotels would lead the trustful traveller to suppose. Under the charge of your guide, a very young man with the dreamy, wistful eyes of those who live in valleys, you leave the farmstead early in the forenoon, arriving towards twilight […]

My first appearance at a Music Hall was in the year one thousand eight hundred and s—. Well, I would rather not mention the exact date. I was fourteen at the time. It was during the Christmas holidays, and my aunt had given me five shillings to go and see Phelps–I think it was Phelps–in […]

Once upon a time in Zandam, which is by the Zuider Zee, there lived a wicked man named Nicholas Snyders. He was mean and hard and cruel, and loved but one thing in the world, and that was gold. And even that not for its own sake. He loved the power gold gave him–the power […]

They look so dull and dowdy in the spring weather, when the snow drops and the crocuses are putting on their dainty frocks of white and mauve and yellow, and the baby-buds from every branch are peeping with bright eyes out on the world, and stretching forth soft little leaves toward the coming gladness of […]

The neighbourhood of Bloomsbury Square towards four o’clock of a November afternoon is not so crowded as to secure to the stranger, of appearance anything out of the common, immunity from observation. Tibb’s boy, screaming at the top of his voice that she was his honey, stopped suddenly, stepped backwards on to the toes of […]

Myself, I do not believe this story. Six persons are persuaded of its truth; and the hope of these six is to convince themselves it was an hallucination. Their difficulty is there are six of them. Each one alone perceives clearly that it never could have been. Unfortunately, they are close friends, and cannot get […]

Collection of short stories INTRODUCTORY It was Christmas Eve. I begin this way because it is the proper, orthodox, respectable way to begin, and I have been brought up in a proper, orthodox, respectable way, and taught to always do the proper, orthodox, respectable thing; and the habit clings to me. Of course, as a […]