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I should have dropped the record of my folly into the flames and so played out the last scene in my puppet’s stead, had I not remembered in time my promise to you. Well!—you had expected to receive it worn from the caresses of eager thumbs, scented perhaps with the bouquet of reverent...

Cyril had never passed through such a terrible minute in his whole life as that one during which his father remained silent, instead of replying to his fierce assailant's demand. A short while before the train-boy, passing down the outside passage of the comfortable American train, bearing his...

Some dogs love being photographed and others simply hate it. We once had a dog called Tim who was determined to be in every photograph. It didn’t matter what we were trying to take, Tim would do his best to push in. And the worst of it was that when you were busy with the camera you couldn’t...

“Smoking Flax” is a story of the South written by a young Kentucky woman. Undoubtedly in the South its advent will be saluted with enthusiastic bravos. What will be the nature of its reception in the North it is hazardous to predict. One thing, however, can be confidently prophesied for it...

The scene opens upon one of those great rivers of the West, in the country which Tecumseh claimed and fought for so gallantly. The forest was at rest, save only the songs of birds and the splash of the fish leaping in the river. A thicket of bushes which bordered the path down to the water, was...

The large and rather comfortable apartment of Rufus Haymaker, architect, in Central Park West, was very silent. It was scarcely dawn yet, and at the edge of the park, over the way, looking out from the front windows which graced this abode and gave it its charm, a stately line of poplars was still...

In the seventeenth century there was a seemingly insatiable demand in Europe for beaver pelts, inflated in no small degree by early laws prohibiting the use of cheaper furs in hat making. Since there was an apparently inexhaustible supply of these pelts in America, the fur trade quickly became the...

I saw him on a sleepless night when I was walking desperately to save my soul and my vision. My coming to New York had been a mistake; for whereas I had looked for poignant wonder and inspiration in the teeming labyrinths of ancient streets that twist endlessly from forgotten courts and squares...

Burt was tired of taking his family out to the asteroids for a picnic every week-end. But with a wife and two spoiled brats to goad him into the regular routine, what could a man do? Only, as it turned out, this particular picnic wasn't quite regular routine!

With all kinds of plots twisting in my head, I hadn't slept well the night before. For one thing, I'd worked too late on a yarn that wasn't worth it. For another, there'd been a high wind howling through the streets. It made me restless and did a lot more damage than that. When I got up I found...