Edited by GEORGE ILES PREFACE A good play gives us in miniature a cross-section of life, heightened by plot and characterisation, by witty and compact dialogue. Of course we should honour first the pl...

Honore de Balzac Translated by Clara Bell and others DEDICATION To His Highness Count William of Wurtemberg, as a token of the Author's respectful gratitude. DE BALZAC. Z. MARCAS I never saw anybo...

Stephen Vincent Benet [Stephen Vincent Bene't, American Poet and short- story writer -- 1898-1943.] Dedication To W. R. B. And so, to you, who always were Perseus, D'Artagnan, Lancelot To me, I give t...

Max Beerbohm Till I gave myself the task of making a little selection from what I had written since last I formed a book of essays, I had no notion that I had put, as it were, my eggs into so many bas...

John Greenleaf Whittier "Here's to budgets, packs, and wallets; Here's to all the wandering train." BURNS.(1) I CONFESS it, I am keenly sensitive to "skyey influences." (2) I profess no indifference t...

A STORY OF THE OUTDOOR WEST William MacLeod Raine CHAPTER 1. A DESERT MEETING An automobile shot out from a gash in the hills and slipped swiftly down to the butte. Here it came to a halt on the whi...

Charles Dickens THE WRECK I was apprenticed to the Sea when I was twelve years old, and I have encountered a great deal of rough weather, both literal and metaphorical. It has always been my opinion...

Eliot Gregory To the Reader THERE existed formerly, in diplomatic circles, a curious custom, since fallen into disuse, entitled the Pele Mele, contrived doubtless by some distracted Master of Ceremoni...

F. (Fulgence) Marion 1870 PREFACE "Let posterity know, and knowing be astonished, that on the fifteenth day of September, 1784, Vincent Lunardi of Lucca, in Tuscany, the first aerial traveller in Brit...

Olive Schreiner Author of "Dreams," "The Story of an African Farm," "Trooper Peter Halket," "Dream Life and Real Life," etc. etc. Dedicated to Constance Lytton "Glory of warrior, glory of orator, ...