Nine-year-old Vanka Zhukov, who had been apprentice to the shoemaker Aliakhin for three months, did not go to bed the night before Christmas. He waited till the master and mistress and the assistants had gone out to an early church-service, to procure from his employer’s cupboard a small phial of ink and a penholder with a rusty nib; then, spreading a crumpled sheet of paper in front of him, he began to write.
(more…)
I had heard a great deal about Miss Beam’s school, but not till last week did the chance come to visit it.
(more…)
The fate of Madame Lemaire had certainly not been an ordinary one. She was French, of Marseilles, as you could tell by her accent, especially when she said “C’est bien!” and had been an extremely coquettish and lively girl, with a strong will of her own and a passionate love of pleasure and of town life. From her talk when she was seventeen, you would have gathered that if she ever moved from Marseilles it would be to go to Paris. Nothing else would be good enough for her. She felt herself born to play a part in some great city.
(more…)
Against an autumn sunset the steel skeleton of a twenty-story office building in process of construction stood out black and bizarre. It flung up its beams and girders like stern and yet airy music, orderly, miraculously strong, and delicately powerful. From the lower stories, where masons made their music of trowel and hammer, to the top, where steam-riveters rapped out their chorus like giant locusts in a summer field, the great building lived and breathed as if all those human energies that went to its making flowed warm through its steel veins.
(more…)
Yes, I will tell you why I did it. I can talk to you, because you are a gentleman. You will understand. Those others were horrible men, policemen. They hustled me, they took me by the arm—me! Did you ever see a prison cell before? I never did. It’s a queer place to receive you in, but that isn’t my fault. They won’t let me out.
(more…)
A prominent Houston colonel, who is also a leading church member, started for church last Sunday morning with his family, as was his custom. He was serene and solid-looking, and his black frock coat and light gray trousers fitted him snugly and stylishly.
(more…)
“Are you sure?”
The doctor nodded briefly. “Very sure, and the quicker the better!”
(more…)
It was autumn in London, that blessed season between the harshness of winter and the insincerities of summer; a trustful season when one buys bulbs and sees to the registration of one’s vote, believing perpetually in spring and a change of Government.
(more…)
When Parepa was here she was everywhere the people’s idol. The great opera houses in all our cities and towns were thronged. There were none to criticise or carp. Her young, rich, grand voice was beyond compare. Its glorious tones are remembered with an enthusiasm like that which greeted her when she sung.
(more…)
Into the judge’s empty office came the attorney for the defense, followed by his client. The attorney for the defense wore belligerent hair and spectacles. His manner was more upright and simple than his speech, which was full of guile.
(more…)
The year 1492 was a dark one for the sons of Shem. The fall of Granada and the expulsion of the Jews from Spain are events more generally commemorated than the equally dramatic episode which wound up with the tragic death of Bajazid, the dashing caliph of Damascus, surnamed Yildirim—“the thunderbolt.”
(more…)
When young Gustaf Falk, the assistant councilor, made his ceremonial proposal for Louise’s hand to her father, the old gentleman’s first question was: “How much are you earning?”
(more…)
On all the roads about Goderville the peasants and their wives were coming toward the town, for it was market day.
(more…)
One dollar and eighty-seven cents. That was all. And sixty cents of it was in pennies. Pennies saved one and two at a time by bulldozing the grocer and the vegetable man and the butcher until one’s cheeks burned with the silent imputation of parsimony that such close dealing implied. Three times Della counted it. One dollar and eighty-seven cents. And the next day would be Christmas.
(more…)
Intermittently, when the snow ceased falling for a moment, Wojak could see the regiments ahead, black against the white fields, crawling interminably over the hilltop under the dull sky. Wojak was a burly, bearded fellow. These winter days pleased him. He liked the tingle that came with marching in the cold air. He liked the dull, rhythmic “scruff” of the hundreds of feet as the regiment swung along, welded by its months of marching into a living unity.
(more…)
This little story will be a disappointment to women who read it. They will all say: “I don’t see anything in that.” Probably there isn’t much.
(more…)
In the dingy office of A. Slivowitz & Co., manufacturers of dyes, things were humming. Every clerk was bent over his desk, hard and cheerfully at work, and there was a general air of bustle and efficiency.
(more…)
Tomodata, the young samurai, owed allegiance to the Lord of Noto. He was a soldier, a courtier, and a poet. He had a sweet voice and a beautiful face, a noble form and a very winning address. He was a graceful dancer, and excelled in every manly sport. He was wealthy and generous and kind. He was beloved by rich and by poor.
(more…)
All this time I had gone on loving Dora harder than ever. If I may so express it, I was steeped in Dora. I was not merely over head and ears in love with her, I was saturated through and through.
(more…)
As a Westerner, I was amused by the discreet sinfulness of Boston; but when business called me to Maine, our down-east sister, whose temperate example is always held before our eyes, I felt that I was about to set foot on the stepping-stone of heaven. To provide against the serpent that must inevitably haunt such an Eden, I filled my pocket flask with the standard Western remedy for snake bites.
(more…)
Raicharan was twelve years old when he came as a servant to his master’s house. He belonged to the same caste as his master, and was given his master’s little son to nurse. As time went on the boy left Raicharan’s arms to go to school. From school he went on to college, and after college he entered the judicial service. Always, until he married, Raicharan was his sole attendant.
(more…)
“No,” said the curiosity dealer, “that mummy is not for sale. I had too big a job to get it.”
“Tell me about it,” I asked.
(more…)
The tent flap lifted and dropped. The prisoner could make out the dim outlines of a man’s form.
“To be shot at sunrise, eh?”
(more…)
Never are there such departures as from the dock at Honolulu. The great transport lay with steam up, ready to pull out. A thousand persons were on her decks; five thousand stood on the wharf. Up and down the long gangway passed native princes and princesses, sugar kings and the high officials of the Territory.
(more…)
The typewriters were clicking busily in the place. Every one seemed honestly, industriously at work.
(more…)
Manuel shouldn’t have been employed as a census taker. He wasn’t qualified. He couldn’t read a map. He didn’t know what a map was. He only grinned when they told him that North was at the top.
He knew better.
(more…)
No one knew just how popular Cobbe was till Dick Walling shot him. It was Cobbe’s fault, but Walling didn’t wait to explain. Like others, he didn’t know the degree of the deceased’s popularity but he had a fair idea, and left Monterey as fast as his horse could take him. The animal was the speediest in the county.
(more…)
Once in the autumn I happened to be in a very unpleasant and inconvenient position. In the town where I had just arrived and where I knew not a soul, I found myself without a farthing in my pocket and without a night’s lodging.
(more…)
The man whose story is here to be told was the wealthiest and most influential person in his parish; his name was Thord Överaas. He appeared in the priest’s study one day, tall and earnest.
(more…)
Melting snow in the spring and cloud-bursting rains in the fall poured their floods from the foothills, through the arroyo, and were licked up and lost in the arid lands below. The Mormons came, dammed the outlet in the ridge—and, lo! there was a lake.
(more…)
The royal Malay tiger is no gentleman. If he were, the following would never have been told.
(more…)
Commercial affaire had engaged me to make a sea voyage. I had got far from the shores of my native country, when a dreadful tempest threw me on an unknown coast; however, I fell into the hands of a very humane people, and soon found they had brought the arts to great perfection, that they practised many virtues, and appeared to me in a state as enlightened as humanity could attain.
(more…)
Phatik Chakravorti was ringleader among the boys of the village. A new mischief got into his head.
(more…)
“There, Simmons, you blockhead! Why didn’t you trot that old woman aboard her train? She’ll have to wait here now until the 1.05 a.m.”
“You didn’t tell me.”
(more…)
Everything in Lelechka’s nursery was bright, pretty, and cheerful. Lelechka’s sweet voice charmed her mother. Lelechka was a delightful child. There was no other such child, there never had been, and there never would be.
(more…)
I am thirteen years old and Jill is eleven and a quarter. Jill is my brother. That isn’t his name, you know; his name is Timothy and mine is George Zacharias; but they call us Jack and Jill.
Well, Jill and I had an invitation to Aunt John’s this summer, and that was how we happened to be there.
(more…)
For Hubert Lapell this first love-affair was extremely important. “Important” was the word he had used himself when he was writing about it in his diary. It was an event in his life, a real event for a change. It marked, he felt, a genuine turning-point in his spiritual development.
(more…)
“Seeing,” they said, “that old-time Pan is dead, let us now make a tomb for him and a monument, that the dreadful worship of long ago may be remembered and avoided by all.”
(more…)
The Berceau de Dieu was a little village in the valley of the Seine.
(more…)
A Judge said to a Convicted Assassin:
“Prisoner at the bar, have you anything to say why the death-sentence should not be passed upon you?”
(more…)
It was long after the midnight hour in the dimly lighted wards of the field hospital back of the English battle line at Ypres, and pretty, white-capped Nydia, the nurse best beloved by the wounded soldiers—Nydia, with the face of a Madonna and voice as soft and soothing as that of a mother crooning a lullaby to a sleeping babe—was flitting about among the cots, adjusting a bandage or pillow here, and giving a swallow of water or medicine there, and doing everything possible for the comfort of her charges.
(more…)
Some business had detained me in Chancery Lane until nine in the evening, and thereafter, having some inkling of a headache, I was disinclined either for entertainment or further work. So much of the sky as the high cliffs of that narrow canon of traffic left visible spoke of a serene night, and I determined to make my way down to the Embankment, and rest my eyes and cool my head by watching the variegated lights upon the river.
(more…)
