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The following pages contain a glimpse of the youth Washington when he first stepped into public view. It is said the President and General are known to us but “George Washington is an unknown man.” Those, to whom the man is lost in the official, may well consider Edward Everett’s oration in which the conduct of the youth Washington is carefully described—that the orator’s audience might see “not an ideal hero, wrapped in cloudy generalities and a mist of vogue panegyric, but the real identical man.”

From the Earth to the Moon, Direct in Ninety-Seven Hours and Twenty Minutes: and a Trip Round It by Jules VerneDuring the War of the Rebellion, a new and influential club was established in the city of Baltimore in the State of Maryland. It is well known with what energy the taste for military matters became developed amongst that nation of ship-owners, shopkeepers, and mechanics. Simple tradesmen jumped their counters to become extemporized captains, colonels, and generals, without having ever passed the School of Instruction at West Point: nevertheless, they quickly rivalled their compeers of the old continent, and, like them, carried off victories by dint of lavish expenditure in ammunition, money, and men.But the point in which the Americans singularly distanced the Europeans was in the science of gunnery. Not, indeed, that their weapons retained a higher degree of perfection than theirs, but that they exhibited unheard-of dimensions, and consequently attained hitherto unheard-of ranges. In point of grazing, plunging, oblique, or enfilading, or point-blank firing, the English, French, and Prussians have nothing to learn; but their cannon, howitzers, and mortars are mere pocket-pistols compared with the formidable engines of the American artillery.This fact need surprise no one. The Yankees, the first mechanicians in the world, are engineers—just as the Italians are musicians and the Germans metaphysicians—by right of birth. Nothing is more natural, therefore, than to perceive them applying their audacious ingenuity to the science of gunnery. Witness the marvels of Parrott, Dahlgren, and Rodman. The Armstrong, Palliser, and Beaulieu guns were compelled to bow before their transatlantic rivals.Now when an American has an idea, he directly seeks a second American to share it. If there be three, they elect a president and two secretaries. Given four, they name a keeper of records, and the office is ready for work; five, they convene a general meeting, and the club is fully constituted. So things were managed in Baltimore. The inventor of a new cannon associated himself with the caster and the borer. Thus was formed the nucleus of the "Gun Club." In a single month after its formation it numbered 1833 effective members and 30,565 corresponding members.One condition was imposed as a sine qua non upon every candidate for admission into the association, and that was the condition of having designed, or (more or less) perfected a cannon; or, in default of a cannon, at least a firearm of some description. It may, however, be mentioned that mere inventions of revolvers, five-shooting carbines, and similar small arms, met with but little consideration. Artillerists always commanded the chief place of favour.The estimation in which these gentlemen were held, according to one of the most scientific exponents of the Gun Club, was "proportional to the masses of their guns, and in the direct ratio of the square of the distances attained by their projectiles."The Gun Club once founded, it is easy to conceive the result of the inventive genius of the Americans. Their military weapons attained colossal proportions, and their projectiles, exceeding the prescribed limits, unfortunately occasionally cut in two some unoffending pedestrians. These inventions, in fact, left far in the rear the timid instruments of European artillery.

After the war had fairly got going, naturally we thought a good deal about it, and it was explained to us by Fortescue that, behind the theory of Germany licking us, or us licking Germany, as the case might be, there were two great psychical ideas. As I was going to be a soldier myself, the actual fighting interested me most, but the psychical ideas were also interesting, because Fortescue said that often the cause won the battle. Therefore it was better to have a good psychical idea behind you, like us, than a rotten one, like Germany. I always thought the best men and the best ships and the best brains and the most money were simply bound to come out top in the long run; but Fortescue said that a bad psychical idea behind these things often wrecks the whole show. And so I asked him if we had got a good psychical idea behind us, and he said we had a champion one, whereas the Germans were trusting to a perfectly deadly psychical idea, which was bound to have wrecked them in any case--even if they'd had twenty million men instead of ten

After the war had fairly got going, naturally we thought a good deal about it, and it was explained to us by Fortescue that, behind the theory of Germany licking us, or us licking Germany, as the case might be, there were two great psychical ideas. As I was going to be a soldier myself, the actual fighting interested me most, but the psychical ideas were also interesting, because Fortescue said that often the cause won the battle. Therefore it was better to have a good psychical idea behind you, like us, than a rotten one, like Germany. I always thought the best men and the best ships and the best brains and the most money were simply bound to come out top in the long run; but Fortescue said that a bad psychical idea behind these things often wrecks the whole show. And so I asked him if we had got a good psychical idea behind us, and he said we had a champion one, whereas the Germans were trusting to a perfectly deadly psychical idea, which was bound to have wrecked them in any case--even if they'd had twenty million men instead of ten

If we are to view Arlen's first published book, The London Venture, as being semi-autobiographical, then we will never know why Arlen made this "silly mistake" of going to Edinburgh instead of Oxford. We know however what led Arlen to London, where he would make his break into a literary career.In The London Venture, Arlen writes: "I, up at Edinburgh, was on the high road to general fecklessness. I only stayed there a few months; jumbled months of elementary medicine, political economy, metaphysics, theosophy--I once handed round programs at an Annie Besant lecture at the Usher Hall--and beer, lots of beer. And then, one night, I emptied my last mug, and with another side-glance at Oxford, came down to London; 'to take up a literary career' my biographer will no doubt write of me.

Eleana was excited that it was her birthday. When none of her friends wished her a Happy Birthday she became very sad. The Alphabet Kids did not want her to know that they had been making secret plans all along. Find out what happens next in Elena's Birthday Surprise. Elena is Hispanic-American. Alphabet Kids is an original multicultural children's series created by Allegra Joyce Kassin. The delightful and timeless stories follow the adventures of Allegra, Elena, Isaac, Oni, Umar and Yang as they learn to embrace diversity through language, foods, customs, and music! The stories are intended to help children learn to love who they are and realize that people who are different can be very good friends plus other valuable life lessons.

School Credit for Home Work by Lewis Raymond AldermanIt has been a surprise and a delight to me, as this book has been in progress, to learn of the many different ways that people have worked out these home credit plans. It has been as if I could see into many happy schoolrooms. Letters from mothers and fathers boasting of the accomplishments of their children, have brought to me a little glow from the hearthsides of many homes. A father brought his boy—or rather the boy brought his father—up to see me and talk over what the boy was doing at home. The father boasted of the boy's fine garden, his big pumpkins, his watermelons that would attract the neighbors. Johnny almost burst the top button off his vest with pride as his father praised him and patted him on the head. After this happy meeting, the father and the son got on the high wagon seat and rode home; and as I saw them going down the street, I could imagine what they talked about. Such glimpses help to make a school man's life worth while; and I have had many of them as I have been writing this book.For the fact that this book exists at all, I am indebted to my wife, who has helped me with every part of it, and to Mr. and Mrs. C. C. Thomason, of Olympia, Washington, who believed in the book from the first. Mrs. Thomason has also done much work on the book; she has gathered all the illustrative material, visiting many schools and writing many letters. She and my wife have done most of the organizing of material, and have gone over the manuscript together. To Miss Fanny Louise Barber, of the Washington High School, Portland, I am grateful for her careful reading and revision of several chapters. I owe thanks to Mrs. Sarah J. Hoagland, of Belt, Montana, for the true and vivid stories she has sent me; and I am thankful to all the home credit teachers, with whom we have been corresponding, for their painstaking answers to our letters, as well as for the valuable plans that they have originated.

Red Head and Whistle Breeches by Ellis Parker ButlerWhen Tim Murphy let his enthusiasm get the better of his judgment and, in the excitement of that disastrous night, joined the front rank of the strikers in a general mix-up and cracked the head of a deputy sheriff, the result was what he might have expected—two years in the penitentiary. That was all right. The peace of the commonwealth must be preserved, and that is why laws and penitentiaries exist, but it sometimes goes hard with the mothers and wives. That is also to be expected, and the boy should have thought of it before he crowded to the front of the angry mob or struck the deputy.It went very hard with the boy's mother and wife. It went hard with his old man, too. It is a cruel thing to have one's only boy in the penitentiary, even if one is only a village hod carrier.

Autumn Impressions of the Gironde by Isabel Giberne SievekingTo each man or woman of us there is the Country of our Ideals. The ideals may be newly aroused; they may be of long standing. But some time or other, in some way or other, there is the country; there is the place; there is the sunny spot in our imagination-world which calls to us—and calls to us in no uncertain voice.It is true we are not always susceptible to that call: it is true we are not always responsive, but it is there all the same. Sometimes there comes to us a day when that "call" is insistent, all-compelling, irresistible; a day in which it sounds with indescribable music, indescribable vibration, through that inner world into which we all go now and again, when days are monotonous or depressing.It is impossible to conjecture why some country, some place, some woman, should make that indescribable appeal which lays a hand on the latch of those gates leading to that world of imagination which exists in most of us far, far below the placid, shallow waters of conventionalism. It is impossible to conjecture when or where the voice and the call will sound in our ears. The man who hears it will recognise what it means, but will in no way be able to account for it.He will only know with what infinite satisfaction he is sensible of the touch which enables him to "slip through the magic gates," as a great friend once expressed it, into the world of Idealism, of Imagination.