Miss Almira Johnson was a virtuous spinster, aged thirty-nine, who lived in a highly respectable boarding-house on the north side. Her days she spent in keeping the books of a large leather firm, in an office which she shared with two male clerks who were married, and a red-headed boy of sixteen, who was small […]

“What an unpleasant surprise it must have been to Klingenspiel,” remarked the emir, when he had completed his narration, “to find all his fine experimenting in the science of heredity merely resulting in nearly accomplishing his own death.” “His experience is not unique,” said Mr. Middleton. “There is many an economic, social, political, or industrial […]

It was the time of full moon. As the orb of day dropped its red, huge disk below the western horizon, over the opposite side of the world, the moon, even more huge and scarcely less red, rose to irradiate with its mild beams the scenes which the shadows of darkness had not yet touched. […]

It was a lowering and gloomy night in the early part of the present century. Mr. Edward Middleton, a gallant youth, who had but lately passed his twenty-third year, was faring northward along the southern part of that famous avenue of commerce, Clark Street, in the city of Chicago, wending his way toward the emporium […]

“I am at a loss to understand,” said Mr. Middleton, “why you have entitled the narration you have just related, ‘The Pleasant Adventures of Dr. McDill.’ For to my mind, they seemed anything but pleasant adventures.” “How so?” asked the emir. “Is it not pleasant to thwart the machinations and defeat the evil intentions of […]

“It is strange,” said Mr. Middleton, “that after Clarissa had shown her devotion to the extent of saving his life, Captain Leadbury could have had, even for a moment, any misgivings that she loved him.” “One cannot always be sure,” said the emir. “A lover, being in a highly nervous state because of his emotion, […]

Miss Clarissa Dawson was a young lady who had charge of the cutlery counter in one of the great emporiums of State Street. She was reckoned of a pretty wit and not more cutting were the Sheffield razors that were piled before her than the remarks she sometimes made to those who, incited thereto by […]

“I did not know that such things were possible,” said Mr. Middleton, when Prince Achmed had concluded the tale of the episode of the two Orientalists and the faithless woman. “Do I understand that the person in this condition is asleep?” “It is not consistent with strict scientific accuracy to say the person is asleep,” […]

Young William Hicks was a native of the village of Bensonville, in the southern part of Illinois. Having, at the age of twenty, graduated at the head of a class of six in the village school, his father thought to reward him for his diligence in study by a short trip to the city of […]

Dr. August Moehrlein, Ph. D., was a professor of the languages and religions of India. A man of great gravity of countenance and of impressive port, he was popularly reputed to have a complete knowledge of the occult learning of the adepts of India, that nebulous and mysterious philosophy which irreducible to the laws of […]

Being curious to hear of the young ladies who had inquired concerning the emir in the restaurant, and to learn what their connection with that prince might be, Mr. Middleton repaired to the bazaar on Clark Street on the succeeding night. But the emir was not in. Mesrour apparently having experienced one of those curious […]

“The individual whose sad taking-off I have just narrated,” said the emir of the tribe of Al-Yam, “affords an excellent example of the power of good clothes. Suppose he had secreted himself under Miss Almira’s bed wearing a jumper, overalls, and a mask. He would have been arrested and lodged in the penitentiary.” “But he […]

Getting into the hack and settling into the sole remaining vacant space Mesrour had left in loading the vehicle with the emir’s gifts, Mr. Middleton was so preoccupied by a gloomy dejection as he reflected that a most agreeable, not to say inspiring and educating, intimacy was at last ended, that he reached his lodgings […]

Putting the scarabaeus in his left trousers pocket, Mr. Middleton departed, and as he went about his affairs during the next several days, he ceased to think of the talisman, but on the fourth day his attention was recalled to it in a way that indeed seemed to prove that it was a charm possessed […]

It was twelve o’clock on a blustery winter night and Dr. James McDill was where a married man of forty ought to be at such an hour in that season, sleeping soundly by the side of his beloved wife. But his wife was not sleeping. At the stroke of the hour, she had suddenly awoke […]