PREFACE TO THE "CHARLES DICKENS" EDITION OF "AMERICAN NOTES"MY readers have opportunities of judging for themselves whether theinfluences and tendencies which I distrusted in America, had, atthat time, any existence but in my imagination. They can examinefor themselves whether there has been anything in the public careerof that country since, at home or abroad, which suggests that thoseinfluences and tendencies really did exist. As they find the fact,they will judge me. If they discern any evidences of wrong-going,in any direction that I have indicated, they will acknowledge that...　

The Spirit of Place and Other Essaysby Alice MeynellContents:The Spirit of PlaceMrs. DingleySolitudeThe Lady of the LyricsJulyWellsThe FootHave Patience, Little SaintThe Ladies of the IdyllA DerivationA CounterchangeRainLetters of Marceline ValmoreThe Hours of SleepThe HorizonHabits and ConsciousnessShadowsTHE SPIRIT OF PLACEWith mimicry, with praises, with echoes, or with answers, the poetshave all but outsung the bells. The inarticulate bell has found too...　

　IT BEGINS IN DARKNESS　　Effigies of the Earth King festooned the city around Castle Sylvarresta. Everywhere the effigies could be seenhanging beneath shopwindows, standing upright against the walls of the city gates, or nailed beside doorwaysstationed any place where the Earth King might find ingress into a home.　Many of the figures were crude things crafted by childrena few reeds twisted into the form of a man, often with a crown of oak leaves in its hair. But outside the doors of shops and taverns were more ornate figures of wood, the full size of a man, often elaborately painted and coifed　

　ACKNOWLEDGMENTS　Lincoln Child would like to thank Lee Suckno, M.D.; Bry Benjamin, M.D.; Anthony Cifelli, M.D.; and Traian Parvulescu, M.D., for their assistance. Thanks also to my family, nuclear and extended, for their love and support. Special thanks to Nancy Child, my mother, for operatic advice.　Douglas Preston expresses his great appreciation to Christine and Selene for their invaluable advice on the manuscript, and, as always, would like to give his thanks to Aletheia and Isaac. He would also like to thank James Mortimer Gibbons, Jr., M.D., for his very helpful medical expertise....　

　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 f　

　　IT WAS nothing out of the ordinary that Mrs. Barry Rackham had made the appointment with her finger pressed to her lips. That is by no means an unusual gesture for people who find themselves in a situation where the best thing they can think of is to make arrangements to see Nero Wolfe.　　With Mrs. Barry Rackham the shushing finger was only figurative, since she made the date speaking to me on the phone. It was in her voice, low and jerky, and also in the way she kept telling me how confidential it was, even after I solemnly assured her that we rarely notified the press when someone requeste　

A LETTER TO THE SECRETARY OF THE TREASURYRiverdale-on-the-Hudson, OCTOBER 15, 1902.THE HON. THE SECRETARY OF THE TREASURY, WASHINGTON, D. C.:Sir,Prices for the customary kinds of winter fuel having reachedan altitude which puts them out of the reach of literary persons instraitened circumstances, I desire to place with you the following order:Forty-five tons best old dry government bonds, suitable for furnace,gold 7 per cents., 1864, preferred.Twelve tons early greenbacks, range size, suitable for cooking.Eight barrels seasoned 25 and 50 cent postal currency, vintage of 1866,...　

Beasts, Men and Godsby Ferdinand OssendowskiEXPLANATORY NOTEWhen one of the leading publicists in America, Dr. Albert Shaw of the Review of Reviews, after reading the manuscript of Part I of this volume, characterized the author as "The Robinson Crusoe of the Twentieth Century," he touched the feature of the narrative which is at once most attractive and most dangerous; for the succession of trying and thrilling experiences recorded seems in places too highly colored to be real or, sometimes, even possible in this day and generation. I desire, therefore, to assure the reader at the outset th　

Anecdotes of the late Samuel Johnsonby Hesther Lynch PiozziINTRODUCTIONMrs. Piozzi, by her second marriage, was by her first marriage the Mrs. Thrale in whose house at Streatham Doctor Johnson was, after the year of his first introduction, 1765, in days of infirmity, an honoured and a cherished friend. The year of the beginning of the friendship was the year in which Johnson, fifty-six years old, obtained his degree of LL.D. from Dublin, andthough he never called himself Doctorwas thenceforth called Doctor by all his friends.Before her marriage Mrs. Piozzi had been Miss Hesther Lynch Salusbu　

　　December 29th:　A lone figure, hunched down against the howling winter wind, moved step by frozen step through the Colorado wilderness. He was ill clad for such a winter trek, wearing soft thin boots and a clinging mauve with-sparkles tunic. His only defenses against the cold were an engineer cap on his platinum-blond thin hair and a scarf made of an old piece of furniture fabric wrapped several times around his thin pale neck.　The wanderer was nearly frozen to death, his cracked and bleeding gloveless hands shoved into small pockets lined with tissue paper. His pale face, buried in the fabr　

Early Australian Voyagesby John PinkertonContents:IntroductionPelsartTasmanDampierINTRODUCTION.In the days of Plato, imagination found its way, before the mariners, to a new world across the Atlantic, and fabled an Atlantis where America now stands. In the days of Francis Bacon, imagination of the English found its way to the great Southern Continent before the Portuguese or Dutch sailors had sight of it, and it was the home of those wise students of God and nature to whom Bacon gave his New Atlantis. The discoveries of America date from the close of the fifteenth century. The discoveries 　

FAIRY TALES OF HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSENTHE PRINCESS AND THE PEAby Hans Christian AndersenONCE upon a time there was a prince who wanted to marry aprincess; but she would have to be a real princess. He travelled allover the world to find one, but nowhere could he get what he wanted.There were princesses enough, but it was difficult to find out whetherthey were real ones. There was always something about them that wasnot as it should be. So he came home again and was sad, for he wouldhave liked very much to have a real princess....　

PRELIMINARY CHAPTER.* [Note-This Preliminary Chapter originally formed the first of the Novel, but* has now been printed in italics on account of its introductory character.]So down thy hill, romantic Ashbourn, glidesThe Derby dilly, carrying six insides.Frere.The times have changed in nothing more (we follow as we werewont the manuscript of Peter Pattieson) than in the rapid conveyanceof intelligence and communication betwixt one part of Scotlandand another. It is not above twenty or thirty years, according tothe evidence of many credible witnesses now alive, since a little...　

Men, Women and GhostsMen, Women andGhostsby Amy Lowell1- Page 2-Men, Women and GhostsPrefaceThis is a book of stories. For that reason I have excluded all purelylyrical poems. But the word "stories" has been stretched to its fullestapplication. It includes both narrative poems, properly so called; tales...　

THE SPIRIT OF LAWSBy Charles de Secondat, Baron de MontesquieuTranslated by Thomas Nugent, revised by J. V. PrichardThe Translator to the Readerby Thomas Nugent1752The following work may with the strictest justice be said to have done honour to human nature as well as to the great abilities of the author. The wisest and most learned man, and those most distinguished by birth and the elevation of their stations, have, in every country in Europe, considered it as a most excellent performance. And may we be permitted to add, that a sovereign prince [1] as justly celebrated for his probity and go　

ARIZONA NIGHTSARIZONA NIGHTSby STEWART EDWARD WHITE1- Page 2-ARIZONA NIGHTSCHAPTER ONE THE OLEVIRGINIAThe ring around the sun had thickened all day long, and the turquoiseblue of the Arizona sky had filmed. Storms in the dry countries areinfrequent, but heavy; and this surely meant storm.We had ridden since sun-up over broad mesas, down and out of deep...