The noon sun poured fiercely down upon the fields. They stretched in undulating folds between the clumps of trees that marked each farmhouse; the different crops, ripe rye and yellowing wheat, pale-green oats, dark-green clover, spread a vast striped cloak…

Far beyond the bounds of the Milky Way, upon a planet which will never be disclosed to the eye of the most diligent astronomer, blooms the wonderful, mysterious garden of the Holy Virgin Mary. All the flowers that exist upon our poor and sinful earth, bloom…

ONCE upon a time there were two Officials. They were both empty-headed, and so they found themselves one day suddenly transported to an uninhabited isle, as if on a magic carpet. They had passed their whole life in a Government Department, where records were…

IN the course of conversation on Saturday evening it had transpired that Eliza had never been in St. Paul's Cathedral. "Then," I said, "you shall go there to-morrow morning; I will take you." "I'm sure I'm agreeable," said Eliza. On the Sunday morning one…

Hawkshaw, the great detective, was smoking a stogy reflectively when the Colonel burst into the room. "Have you heard—" he began excitedly, but Hawkshaw raised his hand depreciatingly. "My dear Colonel," he said. "You excite yourself unduly: you were about…

Society called him handsome Signoles. His name was Viscount Gontran-Joseph de Signoles. An orphan, and possessed of an adequate income, he cut a dash, as the saying is. He had a good figure and a good carriage, a sufficient flow of words to pass for wit,…

LITTLE Miss Mercer was spending the evening with her canary, her cat, and her cards. Suddenly she held her breath, wished and cut the pack. The of diamonds made his blond appearance. She cut again and turned over the nine of hearts. "He's coming!" she thought…

SPEAKING in a most significant voice, I wish to say that Mortimer had an appointment that afternoon to take Miss Josephine a spin in The Hornet, his forty-horse-power car. And (in a tone that fairly drips with unction) I will add that Mortimer made the following…

SEMEN IVANOV served as trackman on the railroad. His watch-house was twelve versts (nearly eight miles) distant from one station and ten from the other. The year before a large weaving mill had been established about four versts away; and its tall chimneys…

He had begun to read the novel a few days before. He had put it aside because of some urgent business conferences, opened it again on his way back to the estate by train; he permitted himself a slowly growing interest in the plot, in the characterizations.…

The woman had died without pain, quietly, as a woman should whose life had been blameless. Now she was resting in her bed, lying on her back, her eyes closed, her features calm, her long white hair carefully arranged as though she had done it up ten minutes…

Knowing that Mrs. Mallard was afflicted with a heart trouble, great care was taken to break to her as gently as possible the news of her husband's death. It was her sister Josephine who told her, in broken sentences; veiled hints that revealed in half concealing.…

THE WOODTURNER Grigori Petrov, long known as an excellent craftsman and at the same time as the most good-for-nothing peasant in the whole Galchinsky district, is taking his sick old wife to the local hospital. He has to drive some twenty miles, and moreover…

There was once in Florence a young man named Federigo, the son of Messer Filippo Alberighi, renowned above all other men in Tuscany for his prowess in arms and for his courtliness. As often happens to most gentlemen, he fell in love with a lady named Monna…

One day in autumn on my way back from a remote part of the country I caught cold and fell ill. Fortunately the fever attacked me in the district town at the inn; I sent for the doctor. In half-an-hour the district doctor appeared, a thin, dark-haired man…

To Leon Chapron. Marambot opened the letter which his servant Denis gave him and smiled. For twenty years Denis has been a servant in this house. He was a short, stout, jovial man, who was known throughout the countryside as a model servant. He asked: "Is…

LADY URSULA had made up her mind, and so the question was settled, although her cousin, Dorothy Fenton, had opposed her scheme. Lady Ursula had put down her foot; and though it was the daintiest in the county, it was certain she would not lift it till she…

It was on the first day of the New Year that the announcement was made, almost simultaneously from three observatories, that the motion of the planet Neptune, the outermost of all the planets that wheel about the sun, had become very erratic. Ogilvy had already…

We were walking along the boardwalk in Ocean Park one summer evening, arm in arm, my friend Sid and me, when we saw a familiar sight on one of the benches just ahead, not far from the surf. «Look,» I said, «and listen.» We looked and listened. There was this…

THE chateau into which my valet had ventured to make forcible entrance, rather than permit me, in my desperately wounded condition, to pass a night in the open air, was one of those piles of commingled gloom and grandeur which have so long frowned among the…