Old Is Gold

Letters of George Borrow to the British and Foreign Bible SocietyRevd. and dear Sir,I have just received your communication, and notwithstanding it is Sunday morning, and the bells with their loud and clear voices are calling me to church, I have sat down to...

Robert Louis Stevenson: A Record, an Estimate, and a MemorialMy little effort to make Thoreau better known in England had one result that I am pleased to think of. It brought me into personal association with R. L. Stevenson, who had written and published...

Catriona It is the fate of sequels to disappoint those who have waited for them; and my David, having been left to kick his heels for more than a lustre in the British Linen Companys office, must expect his late re-appearance to be greeted...

Master Humphrey's ClockAn author, says Fielding, in his introduction to Tom Jones, ought to consider himself, not as the gentleman who gives a private or eleemosynary treat, but rather as one who keeps a public ordinary, to which all persons are welcome for their...

Travels with a Donkey in the CevennesThe journey which this little book is to describe was very agreeable and fortunate for me. After an uncouth beginning, I had the best of luck to the end. But we are all travellers in what John Bunyan...

Desert Gold A FACE haunted Camerona woman's face. It was there in the white heart of the dying campfire; it hung in the shadows that hovered over the flickering light; it drifted in the darkness beyond. This hour, when the day had closed and...

One Basket Before she tried to be a good woman she had been a very bad womanso bad that she could trail her wonderful apparel up and down Main Street, from the Elm Tree Bakery to the railroad tracks, without once having a man...

The Duchesse of Langeais The Duchesse of Langeais is the second part of a trilogy. Part one is entitled Ferragus and part three is The Girl with the Golden Eyes. The three stories are frequently combined under the title The Thirteen. In a Spanish...

The Life of Lazarillo of Tormes: His Fortunes and Misfortunes as Told by HimselfLazarillo of Tormes appeared in sixteenth-century Spain like a breath of fresh air among hundreds of insipidly sentimental novels of chivalry. With so many works full of knights who were manly...

The Magic Egg, and Other Stories THE MAGIC EGG "HIS WIFE'S DECEASED SISTER" THE WIDOW'S CRUISE CAPTAIN ELI'S BEST EAR LOVE BEFORE BREAKFAST THE STAYING POWER OF SIR ROHAN A PIECE OF RED CALICO THE CHRISTMAS WRECK MY WELL AND WHAT CAME OUT OF...

Kidnapped While my husband and Mr. Henley were engaged in writing plays in Bournemouth they made a number of titles, hoping to use them in the future. Dramatic composition was not what my husband preferred, but the torrent of Mr. Henleys enthusiasm swept him...

The Reporter Who Made Himself King The Old Time Journalist will tell you that the best reporter is the one who works his way up. He holds that the only way to start is as a printer's devil or as an office boy, to...

Appreciations of Richard Harding Davis He was almost too good to be true. In addition, the gods loved him, and so he had to die young. Some people think that a man of fifty-two is middle-aged. But if R. H. D. had lived to...

Adventures and Letters of Richard Harding Davis Richard Harding Davis was born in Philadelphia on April 18, 1864, but, so far as memory serves me, his life and mine began together several years later in the three-story brick house on South Twenty-first Street, to...

Vailima Letters - Being Correspondence Addressed by Robert Louis Stevenson to Sidney Colvin, November 1890-October 1894So much of preface seems necessary to this volume as may justify its publication and explain its origin. The writer was for many years my closest friend. It was...

Memories and PortraitsThis volume of papers, unconnected as they are, it will be better to read through from the beginning, rather than dip into at random. A certain thread of meaning binds them. Memories of childhood and youth, portraits of those who have gone...

Worldly Ways & BywaysThere existed formerly, in diplomatic circles, a curious custom, since fallen into disuse, entitled the Ple Mle, contrived doubtless by some distracted Master of Ceremonies to quell the endless jealousies and quarrels for precedence between courtiers and diplomatists of contending pretensions....

Buttered Side Down: Stories Um-m-mmaybe. After the glamour had worn off, and the glass slippers were worn out, did the Prince never find Cinderella's manner redolent of the kitchen hearth; and was it never necessary that he remind her to be more careful of...

Robert Louis StevensonWhen a popular writer dies, the question it has become the fashion with a nervous generation to ask is the question, Will he live? There was no idler question, none more hopelessly impossible and unprofitable to answer. It is one of the...

The Burial of the Guns We do not keep Christmas now as we used to do in old Hanover. We have not time for it, and it does not seem like the same thing. Christmas, however, always brings up to me my cousin Fanny;...