Washington and his Comrades in ArmsA Chronicle of the War of Independenceby George WrongPREFATORY NOTEThe author is aware of a certain audacity in undertaking, himself a Briton, to appear in a company of American writers on American history and above all to write on the subject of Washington. If excuse is needed it is to be found in the special interest of the career of Washington to a citizen of the British Commonwealth of Nations at the present time and in the urgency with which the editor and publishers declared that such an interpretation would not be unwelcome to Americans and pressed upon the author a task for which he doubted his own qualifications. To the editor he owes thanks for w　

Passages from an Old Volume of Lifeby Oliver W. HolmesPAGES FROM AN OLD VOLUME OF LIFE.A COLLECTION OF ESSAYSBY OLIVER WENDELL HOLMESCONTENTS:BREAD AND THE NEWSPAPERMY HUNT AFTER "THE CAPTAIN"THE INEVITABLE TRIALCINDERS FROM ASHESTHE PULPIT AND THE PEWBREAD AND THE NEWSPAPER.(September, 1861.)This is the new version of the Panem et Circenses of the Roman populace. It is our ultimatum, as that was theirs. They must have something to eat, and the circus-shows to look at. We must have something to eat, and the papers to read.Everything else we can give up. If we are rich, we can lay down our carriages, stay away from Newport or Saratoga, and adjourn the trip to Europe sine die. If we live　

Aeroplanes and Dirigibles of Warby Frederick A. TalbotPREFACEEver since the earliest days of the great conquest of the air,first by the dirigible balloon and then by the aeroplane, theiruse in time of war has been a fruitful theme for discussion. Buttheir arrival was of too recent a date, their many utilities toounexplored to provide anything other than theories, manyobviously untenable, others avowedly problematical.Yet the part airships have played in the Greatest War has come asa surprise even to their most convinced advocates. For everyexpectation shattered, they have shown a more than compensatingpossibility of usefulness....　

360 BCSOPHISTby Platotranslated by Benjamin JowettSOPHISTPERSONS OF THE DIALOGUE: THEODORUS; THEAETETUS; SOCRATES;An ELEATIC STRANGER, whom Theodorus and Theaetetus bringwith them; The younger SOCRATES, who is a silent auditorTheodorus. Here we are, Socrates, true to our agreement ofyesterday; and we bring with us a stranger from Elea, who is adisciple of Parmenides and Zeno, and a true philosopher.Socrates. Is he not rather a god, Theodorus, who comes to us inthe disguise of a stranger? For Homer says that all the gods, and...　

Hunting the Grisly and Other Sketchesby Theodore RooseveltAn Account of the Big Game of the UnitedStates and its Chase with HorseHound, and RifleCHAPTER I.THE BISON OR AMERICAN BUFFALO.When we became a nation in 1776, the buffaloes, the first animals tovanish when the wilderness is settled, roved to the crests of themountains which mark the western boundaries of Pennsylvania, Virginia,and the Carolinas. They were plentiful in what are now the States ofOhio, Kentucky, and Tennessee. But by the beginning of the presentcentury they had been driven beyond the Mississippi; and for the next...　

Fabre, Poet of Scienceby DR. G.-V. LEGROS."De fimo ad excelsa."J.-H. Fabre.WITH A PREFACE BY JEAN-HENRI FABRE.TRANSLATED BY BERNARD MIALL.PREFACE.The good friend who has so successfully terminated the task which he felt avocation to undertake thought it would be of advantage to complete it bypresenting to the reader a picture both of my life as a whole and of thework which it has been given me to accomplish.The better to accomplish his undertaking, he abstracted from mycorrespondence, as well as from the long conversations which we have sooften enjoyed together, a great number of those memories of varying...　

The Professor at the Breakfast Tableby Oliver Wendell HolmesPREFACE TO REVISED EDITION.The reader of to-day will not forget, I trust, that it is nearly aquarter of a century since these papers were written. Statementswhich were true then are not necessarily true now. Thus, the speedof the trotting horse has been so much developed that the record ofthe year when the fastest time to that date was given must be veryconsiderably altered, as may be seen by referring to a note on page49 of the "Autocrat." No doubt many other statements and opinionsmight be more or less modified if I were writing today instead ofhaving written before the war, when the world and I were both more...　

An Open-Eyed ConspiracyAn Idyl of Saratogaby William Dean HowellsCHAPTER IThe day had been very hot under the tall trees which everywhereembower and stifle Saratoga, for they shut out the air as well asthe sun; and after tea (they still have an early dinner at all thehotels in Saratoga, and tea is the last meal of the day) I strolledover to the pretty Congress Park, in the hope of getting a breath ofcoolness there. Mrs. March preferred to take the chances on theverandah of our pleasant little hotel, where I left her with theother ladies, forty fanning like one, as they rocked to and frounder the roof lifted to the third story by those lofty shafts...　

THE SKETCH BOOKRURAL LIFE IN ENGLANDby Washington IrvingOh! friendly to the best pursuits of man,Friendly to thought, to virtue, and to peace,Domestic life in rural pleasures past!COWPER.THE stranger who would form a correct opinion of the Englishcharacter must not confine his observations to the metropolis. He mustgo forth into the country; he must sojourn in villages and hamlets; hemust visit castles, villas, farm-houses, cottages; he must wanderthrough parks and gardens; along hedges and green lanes; he must...　

A Cumberland Vendettaby John Fox Jr.TO MINERVA AND ELIZABETHA Cumberland VendettaITHE cave had been their hiding-place as children; it was a secret refuge now against hunger or darkness when they were hunting in the woods. The primitive meal was finished; ashes were raked over the red coals; the slice of bacon and the little bag of meal were hung high against the rock wall; and the two stepped from the cavern into a thicket of rhododendrons.Parting the bushes toward the dim light, they stood on a massive shoulder of the mountain, the river girding it far below, and the afternoon shadows at their feet. Both carried guns-the tall mountaineer, a Winchester; the boy, a squirrel rifle longer th　

Riders of the Purple Sageby Zane GreyCHAPTER I. LASSITERA sharp clip-crop of iron-shod hoofs deadened and died away, and clouds of yellow dust drifted from under the cottonwoods out over the sage.Jane Withersteen gazed down the wide purple slope with dreamy and troubled eyes. A rider had just left her and it was his message that held her thoughtful and almost sad, awaiting the churchmen who were coming to resent and attack her right to befriend a Gentile.She wondered if the unrest and strife that had lately come to the little village of Cottonwoods was to involve her. And then she sighed, remembering that her father had founded this remotest border settlement of southern Utah and that he ha　

Carmenby Prosper MerimeeTranslated by Lady Mary LoydCHAPTER II had always suspected the geographical authorities did not know what they were talking about when they located the battlefield of Munda in the county of the Bastuli-Poeni, close to the modern Monda, some two leagues north of Marbella.According to my own surmise, founded on the text of the anonymous author of the /Bellum Hispaniense/, and on certain information culled from the excellent library owned by the Duke of Ossuna, I believed the site of the memorable struggle in which Caesar played double or quits, once and for all, with the champions of the Republic, should be sought in the neighbourhood of Montilla....