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The Gentleman from San Francisco - and Other Stories by Ivan Alekseyevich BuninThe gentleman from San Francisco--nobody either in Capri or Naples ever remembered his name--was setting out with his wife and daughter for the Old World, to spend there two years of pleasure.He was fully convinced of his right to rest, to enjoy long and comfortable travels, and so forth. Because, in the first place he was rich, and in the second place, notwithstanding his fifty-eight years, he was just starting to live. Up to the present he had not lived, but only existed; quite well, it is true, yet with all his hopes on the future. He had worked incessantly--and the Chinamen whom he employed by the thousand in his factories knew what that meant. Now at last he realized that a great deal had been accomplished, and that he had almost reached the level of those whom he had taken as his ideals, so he made up his mind to pause for a breathing space. Men of his class usually began their enjoyments with a trip to Europe, India, Egypt. He decided to do the same. He wished naturally to reward himself in the first place for all his years of toil, but he was quite glad that his wife and daughter should also share in his pleasures. True, his wife was not distinguished by any marked susceptibilities, but then elderly American women are all passionate travellers. As for his daughter, a girl no longer young and somewhat delicate, travel was really necessary for her: apart from the question of health, do not happy meetings often take place in the course of travel? One may find one's self sitting next to a multimillionaire at table, or examining frescoes side by side with him.The itinerary planned by the Gentleman of San Francisco was extensive. In December and January he hoped to enjoy the sun of southern Italy, the monuments of antiquity, the tarantella, the serenades of vagrant minstrels, and, finally, that which men of his age are most susceptible to, the love of quite young Neapolitan girls, even when the love is not altogether disinterestedly given. Carnival he thought of spending in Nice, in Monte Carlo, where at that season gathers the most select society, the precise society on which depend all the blessings of civilization--the fashion in evening dress, the stability of thrones, the declaration of wars, the prosperity of hotels; where some devote themselves passionately to automobile and boat races, others to roulette, others to what is called flirtation, and others to the shooting of pigeons which beautifully soar from their traps over emerald lawns, against a background of forget-me-not sea, instantly to fall, hitting the ground in little white heaps. The beginning of March he wished to devote to Florence, Passion Week in Rome, to hear the music of the Miserere; his plans also included Venice, Paris, bull-fights in Seville, bathing in the British Isles; then Athens, Constantinople, Egypt, even Japan ... certainly on his way home... . And everything at the outset went splendidly.

The Boy Aviators on Secret Service - Working with Wireless by John Henry Goldfrap“Come in!”The gray-haired man who uttered these words gazed sharply up at the door of the private office of the Secretary of the Navy’s Bureau, at Washington, D. C., as he spoke. He was evidently anticipating callers of more than usual importance judging from his expectant look. The old negro who had knocked opened the door and respectfully stood waiting.“Well, Pinckney?”“Dey have come, sah.”“Ah; good,—show them in at once.”The old negro bowed respectfully and withdrew. A few seconds later he reappeared and ushered in two bright looking youths of sixteen and fourteen with the announcement in a pompous tone of voice:“Messrs. Frank and Harry Chester.”Frank, the elder of the two brothers, was a well set up youngster with crisp, wavy brown hair and steady gray eyes. Harry, his junior by two years, had the same cool eyes but with a merrier expression in them. He, like Frank, was a well-knit, broad-shouldered youth. Both boys were tanned to an almost mahogany tinge for they had only returned a few days before from Nicaragua, where they had passed through a series of strange adventures and perils in their air-ship, the Golden Eagle, perhaps, before her destruction in an electric storm, the best known craft of her kind in the world and one which they had built themselves from top plane to landing wheels.The Secretary of the Navy, for such was the office held by the gray-haired man, looked at the two youths in front of him with some perplexity for a moment.“You are the Boy Aviators we have all heard so much of?” he inquired at length with a note of frank incredulity in his voice.“We are, sir,” rejoined Frank, with just the ghost of a smile playing about his lips at the great man’s evident astonishment—and its equally evident cause.“I beg your pardon,” hastily spoke up the Secretary of the Navy, who had observed Frank’s amusement; “but you seem——”“I know what you were thinking, sir,” interrupted Frank, “that we are very young to undertake such exacting service as Admiral Kimball outlined to us in Nicaragua.”“You have guessed just right, my boy,” rejoined the other, with a hearty laugh at Frank’s taking his thoughts and putting them into such exact words, “but your youth has evidently not interfered with your progress if all the reports I have heard of you are true. Sit down,” he went on, “and we will talk over the proposal the Department has to make to you.”The boys set down their straw hats and seated themselves in two chairs facing the grizzled official. Both listened attentively as he began.“When Admiral Kimball wrote to me about you, telling me that he had found in the two sons of Planter Chester of Nicaragua the very agents we wanted for a particularly dangerous and difficult mission,” he said, “I at once sent for you to come here from New York to see for myself if his judgment was correct. I have not been disappointed—”

The Adopting of Rosa Marie - A Sequel to Dandelion Cottage by Carroll Watson RankinRankin was born 11 May 1864 in Marquette, Michigan, in the Upper Peninsula, and raised her four children there. Her first writing assignment came at the age of 16, when she was hired as a reporter for the Daily Mining Journal. THE oldest inhabitant said that Lakeville was experiencing an unusual fall. He would probably have said the same thing if the high-perched town had accidentally tumbled off the bluff into the blue lake; but in this instance, he referred merely to the weather, which was certainly unusually mild for autumn.It was not, however, the oldest, but four of the youngest citizens that rejoiced most in this unusual prolonging of summer; for the continued warm weather made it possible for those devoted friends, Jean Mapes, Marjory Vale, Mabel Bennett and little Bettie Tucker, to spend many a delightful hour in their precious Dandelion Cottage, the real, tumble-down house that was now, after so many narrow escapes, safely their very own. Some day, to be sure, it would be torn down to make room for a habitable dwelling, but that unhappy day was still too remote to cause any uneasiness.Of course, when very cold weather should come, it would be necessary to close the beloved Cottage, for there was no heating plant, there were many large cracks over and under the doors and around the windows; and by lying very flat on the dining-room floor and peering under the baseboards, one could easily see what was happening in the next yard. These, and other defects, would surely make the little house uninhabitable in winter; but while the unexpectedly extended summer lasted, the Cottagers were rejoicing over every pleasant moment of weather and praying hard for other pleasant moments.Of all the games played in Dandelion Cottage, the one called "Mother" was the most popular. To play it, it was necessary, first of all, to divide the house into four equal parts. As there were five rooms, this division might seem to offer no light task; but, by first subtracting the kitchen, it was possible to solve this difficult mathematical problem to the Cottagers' entire satisfaction.But of course one can't play "Mother" without possessing a family. The Cottagers solved this problem also. Bettie's home could always be counted on to furnish at least two decidedly genuine babies and Jean could always borrow a perfectly delightful little cousin named Anne Halliday; but Marjory and Mabel, to their sorrow, were absolutely destitute of infantile relatives. Mabel was the chief sufferer. Sedate Marjory, plausible of tongue, convincing in manner, could easily accumulate a most attractive family at very short notice by the simple expedient of borrowing babies from the next block; but nowhere within reasonable reach was there a mother willing to intrust her precious offspring a second time to heedless Mabel.

With the Dyaks of Borneo - A Tale of the Head Hunters by F. S. BreretonIt was a balmy autumn day four years after Queen Victoria ascended the throne, and the neighbourhood of Southampton Water was looking perhaps more brilliant and more beautiful than it had during the long summer which had just passed. Already the leaves were covering the ground, and away across the water pine-trees stood up like sentinels amidst others which had already lost their covering. A dim blue haze in the distance denoted the presence of Southampton, then as now a thriving seaport town.Situated on a low eminence within some hundred yards of the sea, and commanding an extended view to either side and in front, was a tiny creeper-clad cottage with gabled roof and twisted chimneys. Behind the little residence there was a square patch of kitchen-garden, in which a grizzled, weather-beaten individual was toiling, whilst in front a long strip of turf, in which were many rose beds, extended as far as the wicket-gate which gave access to the main Portsmouth road.Seated in the picturesque porch of the cottage, with a long clay pipe between his lips, and a telescope of large dimensions beside him, was a gray-headed gentleman whose dress at once betokened that in his earlier days he had followed the sea as a calling. In spite of his sunken cheeks, and general air of ill-health, no one could have mistaken him for other than a sailor; and if there had been any doubt the clothes he wore would have at once settled the question. But Captain John Richardson, to give him his full title, was proud of the fact that he had at one time belonged to the royal navy, and took particular pains to demonstrate it to all with whom he came in contact. It was a little vanity for which he might well be excused, and, besides, he was such a genial good-natured man that no one would have thought of blaming him.On this particular day some question of unusual importance seemed to be absorbing the captain's whole attention. His eyes had a far-away expression, his usually wrinkled brow was puckered in an alarming manner, and the lips, between which rested the stem of his clay pipe, were pursed up in the most thoughtful position. Indeed, so much was he occupied that he forgot even to pull at his smoke, and in consequence the tobacco had grown cold.

The Last of the Flatboats - A Story of The Mississippi and its Interesting Family of Rivers by George Cary EgglestonVevay, from which “The Last of the Flatboats” starts on its voyage down the Mississippi, is a beautiful little Indiana town on the Ohio River, about midway between Cincinnati and Louisville. The town and Switzerland County, of which it is the capital, were settled by a company of energetic and thrifty Swiss immigrants, about the year 1805. Their family names are still dominant in the town. I recall the following as familiar to me there in my boyhood: Grisard, Thiebaud, Le Clerc, Moreraud, Detraz, Tardy, Malin, Golay, Courvoisseur, Danglade, Bettens, Minnit, Violet, Dufour, Dumont, Duprez, Medary, Schenck, and others of Swiss origin.The name Thiebaud, used in this story, was always pronounced “Kaybo” in Vevay. The name Moreraud was called “Murrow.”The map which accompanies this volume was specially prepared for it by Lieut.-Col. Alexander McKenzie of the Corps of Engineers of the United States Army. To his skill, learning, and courtesy I and my readers are indebted for the careful marking of the practically navigable parts of the great river system, and for the calculation of mileage in every case.

Stand By - The Story of a Boy's Achievement in Radio by Hugh McAlisterAuthor of“A Viking of the Sky,” “Flaming River”“Steve Holworth of the Oldham Works”“The Flight of the Silver Ship”“Conqueror of the Highroad”There it stood—a great glass wheel, half submerged in the dusty clutter of an old outhouse filled with broken chairs, moth-eaten strips of carpet, and a tangle of ancient harness. Lee Renaud, spider webs draping his black hair and the dust of ages prickling at his nose, persisted in his efforts to clear this strange mechanism of its weight of junk.At last it was freed, a three-foot circular sheet of glass mounted on a framework of brass and wood. Held against the wheel by slips of wood were pads of some kind of fur, now worn to a few stray hairs and bits of hide. The circle of glass turned on an axis of wood which passed through its center, and attached to this was a series of cogwheels and a handle for cranking the whole affair—at considerable speed, it appeared.Lee Renaud backed off a bit as he stared at the thing. Glittering in the dim sunlight that filtered into the storage shed, it looked strange, almost sinister.But then the boy had found everything here at King’s Cove strange and outlandish. King’s Cove! It sounded rather elegant. Instead, it consisted of a handful of shacks that housed a little village of farming and fishing folk, an ignorant people given over to poverty and superstition. King’s Cove had been aristocratic in its past. A fringe of rotting, semi-roofless “big houses” up beyond the cove testified to the long-gone past when a settlement of rich folk had set out great orange orchards and camphor groves in that strip of South Alabama that touches the Gulf of Mexico. All had gone well until the historic freeze of 1868 had ruined the tropic fruits and emptied the purses of the settlers. After that, the population steadily drifted away from King’s Cove. Squatters came in to fish and to scratch the soil for a living.Of all the old-timers only Gem Renaud remained. He loved the semi-tropic climate, the great oaks swathed in Spanish moss, the bit of sea that indented his land. He preferred remaining in poverty to moving elsewhere and beginning life over again. So he lived on in a white-columned old house that year by year got more leaky and more warped.Then Gem Renaud had slipped and injured his leg. And Lee Renaud had been sent down by his family to look after his Great-uncle Gem.

Mary of Plymouth - A Story of the Pilgrim Settlement by James OtisThe purpose of this series of stories is to show the children, and even those who have already taken up the study of history, the home life of the colonists with whom they meet in their books. To this end every effort has been made to avoid anything savoring of romance, and to deal only with facts, so far as that is possible, while describing the daily life of those people who conquered the wilderness whether for conscience sake or for gain.That the stories may appeal more directly to the children, they are told from the viewpoint of a child, and purport to have been related by a child. Should any criticism be made regarding the seeming neglect to mention important historical facts, the answer would be that these books are not sent out as histories,—although it is believed that they will awaken a desire to learn more of the building of the nation,—and only such incidents as would be particularly noted by a child are used.Surely it is entertaining as well as instructive for young people to read of the toil and privations in the homes of those who came into a new world to build up a country for themselves, and such homely facts are not to be found in the real histories of our land.

The Russian Ballet by Ellen TerryDame Ellen Terry, GBE was an English stage actress who became the leading Shakespearean actress in Britain. Born into a family of actors, Terry began acting as a child in Shakespeare plays and continued as a teen, in London and on tourTHE Russian ballet, at least that section of it which M. de Diaghiliev, patron and grand seigneur rather than agent, has taken all over Europe during the last few years, and more recently to America, is now more than a darling of its own nation, a naturally ballet-loving nation. It has become an international possession. In England the Russian dancers have perhaps been acclaimed with more whole-hearted fervor than elsewhere, because before their coming the land was barren. In France and Italy they had ballets of their own. They have a standard by which they can measure the visitors from St. Petersburg. But English audiences, like children presented with a new toy, first shyly wondered at the novelty of the agile strangers, and then fell into transports of enthusiasm.Uncritical enthusiasm toward art and artists is an amiable attitude of the English once they have been gained over. And this enthusiasm has a way of persisting. "The English public may be slow," said a musician who had taken a long time to win their suffrages, "but they are damnably faithful!" If the fashion in Russian ballet should age elsewhere I feel sure it will not in England, the last country to adopt it. So these notes by an enthusiast have a good chance of being seasonable for many years. Yes, I claim to be an enthusiast, although, perhaps, the fact that I am not an English enthusiast but one who is half Irish and half Scotch makes me more canny than some of my fellow-admirers. I have never opened my mouth and swallowed the new ballet and all its works without thinking. These are, all the same, impressions rather than criticisms. And the impressions are not intended as an explanation of Miss Pamela Colman Smith's pictures any more than her pictures are intended to be an explanation of my impressions. Her pictures surely speak for themselves. And like the clerk, I need only cry "Amen" to her eloquent drawings.

Through Arctic Lapland by Charles John Cutcliffe Wright HyneIt seems customary in a book of travel to make frequent allusions to other voyagers who have journeyed over the same ground, or at least the same district, and to make constant references to them, and give copious quotations from their works. Of course we ought to have gone to the British Museum before starting on our travel, and there read up all books which in the least bore upon the country which we were going to visit. We omitted to do this, firstly, because we preferred to observe things for ourselves, from our own individual standpoint, unprejudiced by the way in which other people had observed them; and, secondly, from the far more potent reason that we made our actual start in a great hurry, and had little enough time for any preparations whatever.However, on our return to England we thought well to check the information we had garnered. So we duly provided ourselves with readers’ tickets for that institution, and went to the British Museum Library, and got down every book which seemed in any way to bear upon the country we had wandered over, regardless of the tongue in which it was written. It was a surprise to us to learn (and may we add that the surprise was not without its pleasant savour?) that of all the volumes in that collection not one covered the route which we took during summer through Arctic Lapland. Many had gone near it, from a gentleman of bygone date who wrote in Latin, to Mr. Paul du Chaillu, who chats about the larger part of the Scandinavian Peninsula. But we seemed to have stumbled across the one bit of Europe which has not been pilloried on paper at one time or another, and so we here venture to take up a couple of note-books which were originally made for personal gratification, and amplify them into a volume of letterpress and sketches which may haply interest others.

A Tale of Two Tunnels - A Romance of the Western Waters by William Clark RussellThe ship Lovelace lay in the East India Docks, being newly arrived from an East India voyage. Her commander, Jackman, stood in her cabin and gazed in his glass; he looked at his face, and seemed to study it. There was a mark as of a blow close under the left eye, and he examined this mark with care.He was a handsome man, with regular features and a dark brown skin. His eyes were black and flashing, and, contrary to the custom of that age, he wore his hair close cropped behind. Being satisfied, he picked up a bag, locked a drawer, quitted his cabin, withdrew the key, and left the ship.He made his way on foot and by coach to Cannon Street, where the offices of the owners of the vessel were situated. Just when he was in the middle of the thoroughfare he was knocked down and his bag taken from him. He lay stunned for some moments, and, when he sprang to his feet, he caught sight of the darting figure of a man flinging the bag into some wide area and rushing on.Captain Jackman gave chase, but did not somehow think of recovering his bag. Then, feeling confused and amazingly shocked by this theft of fifteen hundred pounds in gold and paper—mostly in gold—the money of the owners, he gave up, and walked sullenly, without even thinking of brushing his clothes, towards the offices.Such was the story related to the owners by Captain Jackman of the ship Lovelace. He said he believed his assailant was a rascally little seaman whom he had shipped at Calcutta, and who had given him trouble all the way home.

The Sea Rovers by Rufus Rockwell WilsonA glorious vision is Gloucester harbor, whether seen under the radiant sun of a clear June morning or through the haze and smoke of a mellow October afternoon. Gloucester town lies on a range of hills around the harbor, and fortunate is the man who chances to see it as the background to a stirring marine picture when on a still summer's morning a fleet of two or three hundred schooners is putting to sea after a storm, spreading their white duck against the blue sky and fanning gently hither and thither, singly or in picturesque groups, before the catspaws or idly drifting to eastward, stretching in a long line beyond Thatcher's Island and catching the fresh breeze that darkens the distant offing. Here the green of their graceful hulls, the gilt scrollwork on the bows and the canvas on the tall, tapering masts are reflected as in a mirror on the calm surface; or beyond they are seen heeling over to the first breath of the incoming sea wind that ruffles the glinting steel of the sheeny swell, forming as a whole a scene of inexhaustible variety and beauty.Such a spectacle gives the stranger fitting introduction to Gloucester, for from earliest times the men of the gray old town have been followers of the sea. It was three years after the landing of the Pilgrims at Plymouth that the first Englishman settled on Cape Ann, at the place now called Gloucester, which took its name from the old English cathedral city whence many of its settlers had come. America's Gloucester doubtless seems young to the mother town, which is of British origin and was built before the Romans crossed from Gaul; but, despite the great cathedral in the English town and the importance in the clerical world of the prelates and church dignitaries who found livings there, the Yankee town was for many years a place of more consequence in the world of trade and profit than the English Gloucester has ever been