Mathew Morriss, my father, was a cotton merchant in Liverpool twenty- five years ago–a steady, laborious, clear-headed man, very affectionate and genial in his private intercourse. He was wealthy, and we lived in a sumptuous house in the upper part of the city. This was when I was about ten years old. My father was […]

New York, April 29th.–Last night I came upon this passage in my old author: “Friend, take it sadly home to thee–Age and Youthe are strangers still. Youthe, being ignorant of the wisdome of Age, which is Experience, but wise with its own wisdome, which is of the unshackeled Soule, or Intuition, is great in Enterprise, […]

“What a beautiful girl!” said Mr. Ambrose Drayton to himself; “and how much she looks like–” He cut the comparison short, and turned his eyes seaward, pulling at his mustache meditatively the while. “This American atmosphere, fresh and pure as it is in the nostrils, is heavy-laden with reminiscences,” his thoughts ran on. “Reminiscences, but […]

One cool October evening–it was the last day of the month, and unusually cool for the time of year–I made up my mind to go and spend an hour or two with my friend Keningale. Keningale was an artist (as well as a musical amateur and poet), and had a very delightful studio built onto […]

Among the records of the English state trials are to be found many strange stories, which would, as the phrase is, make the fortune of a modern novelist. But there are also numerous cases, not less stimulating to imagination and curiosity, which never attained more than local notoriety, of which the law was able to […]