FIRST met Jack Burridge nearly ten years ago on a certain North-country racecourse. The saddling bell had just rung for the chief event of the day. I was sauntering along with my hands in my pockets, more interested in the crowd than in the race, when a sporting…

"Pst! Pst! Come with me, you handsome dark fellow. I am very nice, as you will see. Do come up. At any rate you will be able to warm yourself, for I have a capital fire at home." But nothing enticed the foot-passengers, neither being called a handsome, dark…

 "Many of our great men," said I (apropos of many things), "have declared that they owe their success to the aid and encouragement of some brilliant woman."    "I know," said Jeff Peters. "I've read in history and mythology about Joan of Arc and Mme. Yale…

 I did not take temporary editorship of an agricultural paper without misgivings. Neither would a landsman take command of a ship without misgivings. But I was in circumstances that made the salary an object. The regular editor of the paper was going off…

HE got in at Ipswich, with seven different weekly papers under his arm. I noticed that each one insured its reader against death or injury by railway accident. He arranged his luggage upon the rack above him, took off his hat and laid it on the seat beside…

"Bah! Monsieur," the old mountebank said to me; "it is a matter of exercise and habit, that is all! Of course, one requires to be a little gifted that way and not to be butter-fingered, but what is chiefly necessary is patience and daily practice for long…

 "As I have told you before," said Jeff Peters, "I never had much confidence in the perfidiousness of woman. As partners or coeducators in the most innocent line of graft they are not trustworthy."    "They deserve the compliment," said I. "I think they are…

Being the only true and reliable account ever published; taken from the "Roman Daily Evening Fasces," of the date of that tremendous occurrence.    Nothing in the world affords a newspaper reporter so much satisfaction as gathering up the details of a bloody…

NEVER met it myself, but I knew Whibley very well indeed, so that I came to hear a goodish deal about it. It appeared to be devoted to Whibley, and Whibley was extremely fond of it. Personally, I am not interested in spirits, and no spirit has ever interested…

I have a perfect horror of pianos," said Frémecourt, "of those hateful boxes which fill up a drawing-room, and have not even the soft sound and the queer shape of the mahogany or veneered spinets, to which our grandmothers sighed out exquisite, long-forgotten…

  "Satan," said Jeff Peters, "is a hard boss to work for. When other people are having their vacation is when he keeps you the busiest. As old Dr. Watts or St. Paul or some other diagnostician says: 'He always finds somebody for idle hands to do.    "I remember…

In a little district west of Washington Square the streets have run crazy and broken themselves into small strips called "places." These "places" make strange angles and curves. One street crosses itself a time or two. An artist once discovered a valuable…

Once there was a bad little boy whose name was Jim — though, if you will notice, you will find that bad little boys are nearly always called James in your Sunday-school books. It was strange, but still it was true that this one was called Jim.    He didn't…

IT has been told me by those in a position to know—and I can believe it—that at nineteen months of age he wept because his grandmother would not allow him to feed her with a spoon; and that at three and a half he was fished, in an exhausted condition, out…

"There, my friend," I said to Labarbe, "you have just repeated those five words, 'That pig of a Morin.' Why on earth do I never hear Morin's name mentioned without his being called a pig?" Labarbe, who is a Deputy, looked at me with eyes like an owl's, and…

"At that time I was editor of the 'Fanal des Charentes,' and I used to meet Morin every day at the Café du Commerce. The day after his adventure he came to see me, as he did not know what to do. I did not hide my opinion from him, but said to him: 'You are…

"Dinner made me lose my head altogether. I sat beside her, and my hand continually met hers under the table-cloth, my foot touched hers, and our looks encountered each other. "After dinner we took a walk by moonlight, and I whispered all the tender things…

 The conversation drifted smoothly and pleasantly along from weather to crops, from crops to literature, from literature to scandal, from scandal to religion; then took a random jump, and landed on the subject of burglar alarms. And now for the first time…

THE first time we met—to speak—he was sitting with his back against a pollard willow, smoking a clay pipe. He smoked it very slowly, but very conscientiously. After each whiff he removed the pipe from his mouth and fanned away the smoke with his cap. “Feeling…

Jeff Peters was always eloquent when the ethics of his profession was under discussion.    "The only times," said he, "that me and Andy Tucker ever had any hiatuses in our cordial intents was when we differed on the moral aspects of grafting. Andy had his…

THERE were three of us in the smoke room of the Alexandra; a very good friend of mine, myself, and, in the opposite corner, a shy-looking, unobtrusive man, the editor, as we subsequently learned, of a New York Sunday paper. My friend and I were discussing…