Preface To The First Volume.Diligence and accuracy are the only merits which anhistorical writer may ascribe to himself; if any merit, indeed,can be assumed from the performance of an indispensable duty. Imay therefore be allowed to say, that I have carefully examinedall the original materials that could illustrate the subjectwhich I had undertaken to treat. Should I ever complete theextensive design which has been sketched out in the Preface, Imight perhaps conclude it with a critical account of the authorsconsulted during the progress of the whole work; and however suchan attempt might incur the censure of ostentation, I am persuaded...　

The Drums Of Jeopardyby Harold MacGrathCHAPTER IA fast train drew into Albany, on the New York Central, from theWest. It was three-thirty of a chill March morning in the firstyear of peace. A pall of fog lay over the world so heavy thatit beaded the face and hands and deposited a fairy diamond dustupon wool. The station lights had the visibility of stars, andlike the stars were without refulgence - a pale golden aureola,perhaps three feet in diameter, and beyond, nothing. The fewpassengers who alighted and the train itself had the same nebulosityof drab fish in a dim aquarium.Among the passengers to detrain was a man in a long black coat.The high collar was up. The man wore a derby ha　

There are certain unsettled questions in economic theory that have been handed down as a sort of legacy from one generation to another. The discussion of these questions is revived twenty or it may be a hundred times in the course of a decade, and each time the disputants exhaust their intellectual resources in the endeavor to impress their views upon their contemporaries. Not unfrequently the discussion is carried far beyond the limits of weariness and satiety, so that it may well be regarded as an offence against good taste to again recur to so well-worn a theme. And yet these questions return again and again, like troubled spirits doomed restlessly to wander until the hour of their deliv　

An Open Letter on TranslatingBy Dr. Martin Luther, 1483-1546Translated from:"Sendbrief von Dolmetschen"in _Dr. Martin Luthers Werke_,(Weimar: Hermann Boehlaus Nachfolger, 1909),Band 30, Teil II, pp. 632-646by Gary Mann, Ph.D.Assistant Professor of Religion/TheologyAugustana CollegeRock Island, IllinoisPrefaceWenceslas Link to all believers in Christ:The wise Solomon says in Proverbs 11: "The people who withholdgrain curse him. But there is a blessing on those who sell it."This verse speaks truly concerning all that can serve the commongood or the well-being of Christendom. This is the reason the...　

APPENDIX DThe Awful German LanguageA little learning makes the whole world kin.Proverbs xxxii, 7.I went often to look at the collection of curiositiesin Heidelberg Castle, and one day I surprised the keeperof it with my German. I spoke entirely in that language.He was greatly interested; and after I had talked a whilehe said my German was very rare, possibly a "unique";and wanted to add it to his museum.If he had known what it had cost me to acquire my art,he would also have known that it would break anycollector to buy it. Harris and I had been hard atwork on our German during several weeks at that time,...　

The Cruise of the DolphinThe Cruise of theDolphinby Thomas Bailey Aldrich1- Page 2-The Cruise of the Dolphin(1 An episode from The Story of a Bad Boy, the narrator being TomBailey, the hero of the tale.)Every Rivermouth boy looks upon the sea as being in some waymixed up with his destiny. While he is yet a baby lying in his cradle, hehears the dull, far-off boom of the breakers; when he is older, he wandersby the sandy shore, watching the waves that come plunging up the beach...　

Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christby Lew Wallaceto THE WIFE OF MY YOUTH who still abides with meBOOK FIRSTCHAPTER IThe Jebel es Zubleh is a mountain fifty miles and more in length, and so narrow that its tracery on the map gives it a likeness to a caterpillar crawling from the south to the north. Standing on its red-and-white cliffs, and looking off under the path of the rising sun, one sees only the Desert of Arabia, where the east winds, so hateful to vinegrowers of Jericho, have kept their playgrounds since the beginning. Its feet are well covered by sands tossed from the Euphrates, there to lie, for the mountain is a wall to the pasture-lands of Moab and Ammon on the westlands which else ha　

The Wheels of Chanceby H. G. Wells [Herbert George]THE PRINCIPAL CHARACTER IN THE STORYI.If you (presuming you are of the sex that does such things)if you had gone into the Drapery Emporiumwhich is really only magnificent for shopof Messrs. Antrobus & Co.a perfectly fictitious "Co.," by the byeof Putney, on the 14th of August, 1895, had turned to the right-hand side, where the blocks of white linen and piles of blankets rise up to the rail from which the pink and blue prints depend, you might have been served by the central figure of this story that is now beginning. He would have come forward, bowing and swaying, he would have extended two hands with largish knuckles and enormous cuffs ove　

The Black Tulipby Alexandre Dumas, PereChapter 1A Grateful PeopleOn the 20th of August, 1672, the city of the Hague, alwaysso lively, so neat, and so trim that one might believe everyday to be Sunday, with its shady park, with its tall trees,spreading over its Gothic houses, with its canals like largemirrors, in which its steeples and its almost Easterncupolas are reflected, the city of the Hague, the capitalof the Seven United Provinces, was swelling in all itsarteries with a black and red stream of hurried, panting,and restless citizens, who, with their knives in theirgirdles, muskets on their shoulders, or sticks in theirhands, were pushing on to the Buytenhof, a terrible prison,...　

Eben Holden, a Tale of the North Countryby Irving BachellerPREFACEEarly in the last century the hardy wood-choppers began to come west, out of Vermont. They founded their homes in the Adirondack wildernesses and cleared their rough acres with the axe and the charcoal pit. After years of toil in a rigorous climate they left their sons little besides a stumpy farm and a coon-skin overcoat. Far from the centres of life their amusements, their humours, their religion, their folk lore, their views of things had in them the flavour of the timber lands, the simplicity of childhood. Every son was nurtured in the love of honour and of industry, and the hope of sometime being president. It is to be f　

A Confessionby Lev Nikolayevich TolstoyII was baptized and brought up in the Orthodox Christian faith.I was taught it in childhood and throughout my boyhood and youth.But when I abandoned the second course of the university at the ageof eighteen I no longer believed any of the things I had beentaught.Judging by certain memories, I never seriously believed them,but had merely relied on what I was taught and on what wasprofessed by the grown-up people around me, and that reliance wasvery unstable.I remember that before I was eleven a grammar school pupil,...　

FAIRY TALES OF HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSENA CHEERFUL TEMPERby Hans Christian AndersenFROM my father I received the best inheritance, namely a "goodtemper." "And who was my father?" That has nothing to do with the goodtemper; but I will say he was lively, good-looking round, and fat;he was both in appearance and character a complete contradiction tohis profession. "And pray what was his profession and his standingin respectable society?" Well, perhaps, if in the beginning of abook these were written and printed, many, when they read it, wouldlay the book down and say, "It seems to me a very miserable title, I...