This is what happened. On the night that the worst heat wave in northern New England history finally broke-the night of July 19-the entire western Maine region was lashed with the most vicious thunderstorms I have ever seen.　We lived on Long Lake, and we saw the first of the storms beating its way across the water toward us just before dark. For an hour before, the air had been utterly still. The American flag that my father put up on our boathouse in 1936 lay limp against its pole. Not even its hem fluttered. The heat was like a solid thing, and it seemed as deep as sullen quarry-water. That afternoon the three of us had gone swimming, but the water was no relief unless you went out deep.　

　Max A. Collins, Sr.- who served in the Pacific　"This week a high officer of the U.S. Army remarked that he knows of no place under the American flag safer than Hawaii-more secure from the onslaught of actual war."　Honolulu Star Bulletin, May 1941　"There is no chivalry in plete war."　 Edgar Rice Burroughs　ONE:　December 5, 1941　　ONE　Boat Day　　In less than forty-eight hours, six Japanese aircraft carriers-220 miles north of the island of Oahu-would launch 350 warplanes in an attack not preceded by any formal declaration of war. Every significant Naval and air installation would feel the brunt of the surprise raid, which lasted less than two hours and cost the United States military three dest　

　Aletheia Vaune Preston　And　Isaac Jerome Preston　　Acknowledgements　There is one person above all others who must be thanked for the existence of this novel, and that is my good friend the inestimable Forrest Fenn-collector, scholar, and publisher. I will never forget that lunch of ours, many years ago in the Dragon Room of the Pink Adobe, when you told me a curious story-and thereby gave me the idea for this novel. I hope you feel I have done the idea justice.　Having mentioned Forrest, I feel it necessary to make one thing clear: My character Maxwell Broadbent is a plete and total fictional creation. In terms of personality, ethics, character, and family values, the two men could not be mor　

THE ENVIOUS NEIGHBOURLong, long ago an old couple lived in a village, and, as they hadno children to love and care for, they gave all their affectionto a little dog. He was a pretty little creature, and instead ofgrowing spoilt and disagreeable at not getting everything hewanted, as even children will do sometimes, the dog was gratefulto them for their kindness, and never left their side, whetherthey were in the house or out of it.One day the old man was working in his garden, with his dog, asusual, close by. The morning was hot, and at last he put downhis spade and wiped his wet forehead, noticing, as he did so,that the animal was snuffling and scratching at a spot a little...　

　Chapter one　　He had been walking the dirty streets since twilight first began to gather. The pain streamed like liquid fire through every cell of his body - but he locked it away in a corner of his mind, ignored it, and walked.　There was little to please the eye in his surroundings, and he paid scant attention to them. He was on a small poor unimportant planet whose very name, Coranex, meant nothing to him. But around the spaceport clustered a drab, seedy town, which was a well-known stopover on the main space lanes. It attracted freightermen, traders, wandering technicians, space drifters of every sort. Those were the people he was looking for. Those were the people most likely to pick up　

　Up at the unpeopled borderland of cloudy heaven, where unending wind drove eternal snow between and over high gray rocks, the gods and goddesses were gathering.　In the grayness just before dawn, their tall forms came like smoke out of the gray and smoking wind, to take on solidity and detail. Unperturbed by wind or weather, their garments flapping in the shrieking howl of air, they stood upon the rooftop of the world and waited as their numbers grew. Steadily more powers streaked across the sky, bringing reinforcement.　The shortest of the standing figures was taller than humanity, but from the shortest to tallest, all were indisputably of human shape. The dress of most members of the assem　

Down the Mother Lode - Pioneer Tales of CaliforniaBy Vivia HemphillForewordSo many inquiries have been made as to exactly where, and what is the "Mother Lode"!The geologist and the historian agree as to its location and composition, but the old miners and "sojourners" of the vanished golden era give strangely different versions of it. Some of these are here set down, if not all for your enlightenment at least, I hope, for your entertainment.That is, after all, the principal aim of these tales of the old days in California, that are gone "for good." Mark Twain says in his preface to "Roughing It" that there is a great deal of information in his work which he regrets very much but which reall　

I stood in line, as patient as the other taxpayers, my filled out forms and my cash gripped body in my hand. Cash, money, the old fashioned green folding stuff. A local custom that I intended to make expensive to the local customers. I was scratching under the artificial beard, which itched abominably, when the man before me stepped out of the way and I was at the window. My finger stuck in the glue and I had a job freeing it without pulling the beard off as well."e, e, pass it over," the aging, hatchet-faced, bitter and shrewish female official said, hand extended impatiently."On the contrary," I said, letting the papers and banknotes fall away to disclose the immense .75 recoilless pistol　

The Hunchback of Notre Dameby Victor HugoPREFACE.A few years ago, while visiting or, rather, rummaging about Notre-Dame, the author of this book found, in an obscure nook of one of the towers, the following word, engraved by hand upon the wall:~ANArKH~.These Greek capitals, black with age, and quite deeply graven in the stone, with I know not what signs peculiar to Gothic caligraphy imprinted upon their forms and upon their attitudes, as though with the purpose of revealing that it had been a hand of the Middle Ages which had inscribed them there, and especially the fatal and melancholy meaning contained in them, struck the author deeply.He questioned himself; he sought to divine who could 　

　Kona Weather　　MISS MINERVA WINTERSLIP was a Bostonian in good standing, and long past the romantic age. Yet beauty thrilled her still, even the semi-barbaric beauty of a Pacific island. As she walked slowly along the beach she felt the little catch in her throat that sometimes she had known in Symphony Hall, Boston, when her favorite orchestra rose to some new and unexpected height of loveliness.　It was the hour at which she liked Waikiki best, the hour just preceding dinner and the quick tropic darkness. The shadows cast by the tall cocoanut palms lengthened and deepened, the light of the falling sun flamed on Diamond Head and tinted with gold the rollers sweeping in from the coral reef. 　

Castle Rackrentby Maria EdgeworthWith an Introduction by Anne Thackeray RitchieINTRODUCTIONIThe story of the Edgeworth Family, if it were properly told, should be as long as the ARABIAN NIGHTS themselves; the thousand and one cheerful intelligent members of the circle, the amusing friends and relations, the charming surroundings, the cheerful hospitable home, all go to make up an almost unique history of a county family of great parts and no little character. The Edgeworths were people of good means and position, and their rental, we are told, amounted to nearly L3000 a year. At one time there was some talk of a peerage for Mr. Edgeworth, but he was considered too independent for a peerag　

The Iron Puddlerby James J. DavisMY LIFE IN THE ROLLING MILLS AND WHAT CAME OF ITIntroduction by JOSEPH G. CANNONThe man whose life story is here presented between book covers is at the time of writing only forty-eight years old. When I met him many years ago he was a young man full of enthusiasm. I remember saying to him then, "With your enthusiasm and the sparkle which you have in your eyes I am sure you will make good."Why should so young a man, one so recently elevated to official prominence, write his memoirs? That question will occur to those who do not know Jim Davis. His elevation to a Cabinet post marks not the beginning of his career, but rather is the curtain-rise on the second a