Datasets:
ThingAI
/
OmniBook

Dataset card Data Studio Files
xet
 Community
1
text
stringlengths
54
17.5k
Not if Browning is one of your alive places. You will reconnoitre first--James Whitcomb Riley or Ella Wheeler Wilcox. There is no telling where The Enemy will bring you up, if you do not. He may tell you something about Browning you never knew--something you have always wanted to know,--but you will be hurt that he kne...
Michael O'Hennessy, who lives under the hill, sums it up also. He has just bought a brougham in which he and Mrs. O'H. can be seen almost any pleasant Sunday driving in the Park. It is not to be denied that Michael O'Hennessy, sitting in his brougham, is a genuinely happy-looking object. But it is not the brougham itse...
The books that were written to be breathed--gravely chewed upon by the literary infants of this modern day,--who can number them?--books that were made to live in--vast, open clearings in the thicket of life--chapters like tents to dwell in under the wide heaven, visited like railway stations by excursion trains of rea...
The fact that the art of reading as one likes is the most difficult, perhaps the most impossible, of all the arts in modern times, constitutes one of those serio-comic problems of civilisation--a problem which civilisation itself, with all its swagger of science, its literary braggadocio, its Library Cure, with all its...
The main distinction of every greater or more extraordinary book is that it has been written by an extraordinary man--a natural or wild man, a man of genius, who has never been operated on. The main distinction of the man of talent is that he has somehow managed to escape a complete operation. It is a matter of common ...
It is generally considered a dangerous thing to do, to turn a child loose in a library. It might fairly be called a dangerous thing to do if it were not much more dangerous not to. The same forces that wrought themselves into the books when they were being made can be trusted to gather and play across them on the shelv...
The reason that the Hebrew Bible has had more influence in history than all other literatures combined, is that there are fewer emasculated men in it. The one really fundamental and astonishing thing about the Bible is the way that people have of talking about themselves in it. No other nation that has ever existed on ...
There is a certain sense in which it is true that every boy, at least at the point where he is especially alive, is a kind of great man in miniature--has the same experience, that is, in growing. Many a boy who has been regularly represented to himself as a monster, a curiosity of selfishness (and who has believed it),...
In the face of the political objection, the objection of the State to the first person singular, the egoist defends every man's reading for himself as follows. Any book that is allowed to come between a man and himself is doing him and all who know him a public injury. The most important and interesting fact about a ma...
The one thing that it is necessary to do in any part of the world to make any branch of knowledge or deed of mercy, a living and eager thing, is to get men to see how direct its bearing is upon themselves. The man who does not feel concerned when the Armenians are massacred, thousands of miles away, because there is a ...
If a boy from the country were to stand in a city street before the window of a shop, gazing into it with open mouth, he would do more in five or six minutes to measure the power and calibre of the passing men and women than almost any device that could be arranged. Ninety-five out of a hundred of them, probably, would...
When the man who has a little talent tells a truth he tells the truth so ill that he is obliged to tell how to do it. The artist, on the other hand, having given himself up to the truth, almost always tells it as if he were listening to it, as if he were being borne up by it, as by some great delight, even while he spe...
The most serious menace in the present epidemic of analysis in our colleges is not that it is teaching men to analyse masterpieces until they are dead to them, but that it is teaching men to analyse their own lives until they are dead to themselves. When the process of education is such that it narrows the area of unco...
Unfortunately, however, entertainments of this kind have a very serious side to them. It is one thing to smile at an individual when one knows that standing where he does he stands by himself, and another to smile at an individual when one knows that he is not standing by himself, that he is a type, that there must be ...
Ye deaf and senseless minutes of the day, And thou old forest, hold ye this for true, There is no lightning, no authentic dew But in the eye of love; there's not a sound, Melodious howsoever, can confound The heavens and the earth to such a death As doth the voice of love; there's not a breath Will mingle...
The essential difference between a small mood and a large one is that in the small one we see each thing we look on, comparatively by itself, or with reference to one or two relations to persons and events. In our larger mood we see it less analytically. We see it as it is and as it lives and as a god would see it, pla...
Entrance examinations for pupils and teachers alike would determine two points. First, what does this person know about things? Second, what is the condition of his organs--what can he do with them? If the privilege of being a pupil in the standard college were conditioned strictly upon the second of these questions--t...
Not too much stress could possibly be laid upon intimacy with the great books or on the constant habit of living on them. They are the movable Olympus. All who create camp out between the heavens and the earth on them and breathe and live and climb upon them. From their mighty sides they look down on human life. But cl...
The physical organisation, the mere bodily state of the pupil, necessary to appreciate either the form or the substance of a bit of writing like _The Child in the House_, is the first thing a true teacher is concerned with. A college graduate whose nostrils have not been trained for years,--steeped in the great, still ...
In the second place, if he is to teach literature to his pupils as an art to be mastered, he will begin his teaching as a master. Instead of his pupils determining that they will elect him, he will elect them. If there is to be any candidating, he will see that the candidating is properly placed; that the privilege at ...
It is a law that holds as good in the life of a teacher of literature as it does in the lives of makers of literature. From the point of view of the world at large, the author who can do anything else has no right to write for the average man. There are plenty of people who cannot help writing for him. Let them do it. ...
The conclusion is inevitable. As long as we believe in natural selection between pupil and subject, but do not believe in natural selection between pupil and teacher, no great results in education or in teaching a vital relation to books or to anything else will be possible. As long as natural selection between pupil a...
People who prefer to be educated in masses must conform to the law of mass, which is inertia, and to the law of the herd, which is the Dog. As long as our prevailing idea of the best elective is the one with the largest class, and the prevailing idea of culture is the degree from the most crowded college, all natural g...
Except an education in books can bring to pass the right condition of these organs, a state of being in the pupil, his knowledge of no matter how long a list of masterpieces is but a catalogue of the names of things for ever left out of his life. It is little wonder, when the drudgery has done its work and the sorry sh...
I have only been back to the old town twice since the day I left it, as a boy--about this time. The first time I went he was there. I came across him in his big, splendid new library, his face like some live, but wrinkled old parchment, twinkling and human though--looking out from its Dust Heap. "It seems to me," I tho...
No one can feel more strongly than I do my failure to put my finger on the letter of our librarian's faults. I cannot even tell the difference between the faults and the virtues of our librarian's assistants. Either by doing the right thing with the wrong spirit, or the wrong thing with the right spirit they do their f...
The only kind of book that I ever feel close to, in the average library, is a book on war. Even if I go in, in a gentle, harmless, happy, singing sort of way, thinking I want a volume of pastoral poems, by the time I get it, I wish it were something that could be loaded, or that would go off. As for asking for a book a...
One cannot help feeling that if a part of the money that is being spent carnegieing nowadays, that is, in arranging for a great many books and a great many people to pile up order among a great many books, could be spent in providing hundreds of thousands of small libraries, or small places in large ones, where men who...
There are other inspiring things in the world, but there is nothing else that carries itself among the sons of men like the book. With such divine plenteousness--seeds of the worlds in it--it goes about flocking on the souls of men. There is something so broadcast, so universal about the way of a book with a man: bound...
Books are more close to the latent infinity in a human being than anything else can be, because the habit of the infinite is their habit. As books are more independent of space and time than all other known forces in the lives of men, they seem to make all the men who love them independent also. If a man has not room f...
If there were wordlessness for five hundred years, man would seek vast inarticulate words for himself. Cathedrals would rise from the ground undreamed as yet to say we worshipped. Music would be the daily necessity of the humblest life. Orchestras all around the world would be created,--would float language around the ...
There are many indications that this purgative function of literature is the main thing it is for in our present modern life. Modern life is so constituted that the majority of people who live in it are expressing their real selves more truly in their reading than they are in their lives. When one stops to consider wha...
The question that concerns me is, What shall a man do, how shall he act, when he finds himself in the hush of a great library,--opens the door upon it, stands and waits in the midst of it, with his poor outstretched soul all by himself before IT,--and feels the books pulling on him? I always feel as if it were a sort o...
The weak point in our modern education seems to be that it has broken altogether with the spirit or the imagination. Playing upon the spirit or the imagination of a man is the one method possible to employ in educating him in everything except his specialty. It is the one method possible to employ in making even a powe...
It is almost impossible to find a typical educated mind, either in this country or in Europe or anywhere, that is not a rolled-over mind, jealous and crushed by knowledge day and night, and yet staring at its ignorance everywhere. The scientist is almost always a man who takes his mind seriously, and he takes the unive...
By the time a man's a Junior or a Senior nowadays, if he feels the eternal beating against his sides he thinks it must be something else. He thinks he ought to. It is a mere inference. At all events he has little use for it unless he knows just how eternal it is. I am speaking too strongly? I suppose I am. I am thinkin...
But when I see my four faces--the faces of my four special boys, when I hear the college bells ringing to them, it matters a great deal. My soul will not wait. What is the ridge-pole of the world? The distance of a ridge-pole does not count. The extent of a universe does not seem to make very much difference. The next ...
The P. G. S. of M. said something about not being very much surprised--over my case. He said that people who changed their minds as often as I did couldn't reasonably expect consciences spry enough.His general theory seemed to be that I had a conscience once and wore it out."It's getting to be so with everybody nowaday...
Now when I take up a morning paper, half-dread, half-delight, I take it up softly. My whole being trembles in the balance before it. The whole procession of my soul, shabby, loveless, provincial, tawdry, is passed in review before it. It is the grandstand of the world. The vast and awful Roll-Call of the things I ought...
No more adequate plan, or, as the architects call it, no better elevation for a man could possibly be found than a daily newspaper of the higher type. For scope, points of view, topics, directions of interest, catholicity, many-sidedness, world-wideness, for all the raw material a large and powerful man must needs be m...
When Meakins visits me now, the morning after he is gone I take a piece of paper and sum his visit up in a row of propositions. When he came before five years ago--his visit was summed up in a great desire in me, a lift, a vow to the universe. He had the same ideas, but they all glowed out into a man. They came to me a...
It is always the same way. I no sooner get a good, pleasant, interesting, working idea, like this "Reading for Principles," arranged and moved over, and set up in my mind, than some insinuating, persistent, concrete human being comes along, works his way in to illustrate it, and spoils it. Here is Meakins, for instance...
If Sir Joshua Reynolds had gone to Italy earlier he would never have been heard of except as a copyist, lecturer, or colour-commentator. The real value of Sir Joshua Reynolds's "Discourses on Art" is the man in spite of the lecturer. What the man stands for is,--Be original. Get headway of personal experience, some pow...
It's what reading for facts brings a man to, generally--fact for fact's sake. He lunges along for facts wherever he goes. He cannot stop. All an outsider can do in such cases, with nine out of ten scientific or collecting minds, is to watch them sadly in a dull, trance-like, helpless inertia of facts, sliding on to Ign...
When one considers the actual nature of facts, it is obvious that the only possible model for a scientist of the first class or a poet of the first class in this world, is the average man. The only way to be an extraordinary man, master of more of the universe than any one else, is to keep out of the two great pits God...
I admitted that in reading dictionaries, statistics, or mere poets or mere scientists it was necessary to have a purpose to fall back upon to justify one's self. And there was no denying that reading for results was a necessary and natural thing. The trouble seemed to be, that very few people could be depended on to pi...
It seems to need to be recalled that the one possible object of a human being's life in a novel (as out of it) is to be loved. This is definite enough. It is the novel in which the heroine looks finished that does not come to anything. I always feel a little grieved and frustrated--as if human nature had been blaspheme...
The indications are that the more a man spends, makes himself able to spend, a large part of his time, as Whitman did, in standing still and looking around and loving things, the more practical he is. Even if a man's life were to serve as a mere guide-board to the universe, it would supply to all who know him the main ...
If it is true that reading resolves itself sooner or later into two elements in the reader's mind, tables of facts and feelings about the facts, that is, rows of raw fact, and spiritualised or related facts, several things follow. The most important of them is one's definition of education. The man who can get the grea...
It is obvious that whatever may be its dangers, the topical or scientific point of view in knowledge is one that the human race is not going to get along without, if it is to be master of the House it lives in. It is also obvious that the human or artistic, the man-point of view in knowledge is one that it is not going...
It matters little that the worlds that are made in this way are very different in detail or emphasis, that some of them are much smaller and more twisted than others. The great point, so far as education is concerned, is for all teachers to realise that every man is a whole world, that it is possible and natural for ev...
But here is the conviction. As I was going to say, knowledge which comes to a man with any particular sweep or scope is in the very nature of things dramatic. If the minds of two men expressing opinions in the dark could be flashed on a canvas, if there could be such a thing as a composite photograph of an opinion--a b...
In this day of immeasurable exercises, why does not some one put in a word for the good old-fashioned exercise of being born again? It is an exercise which few men seem to believe in, not even once in a lifetime, but it is easily the best all-around drill for living, and even for reading, that can be arranged. And it i...
It is all a theory, I suppose. I cannot prove anything with it. I dare say it is true that neither I nor any one else can get, by reading in this way, what I like to think I am getting, slowly, a cross-section of the universe. But it is something to get as time goes on a cross-section of all the human life that is bein...
This is what the great city said. And while I still listened, the roar broke over me once more with its NO! NO! NO! its million voices in it, its million souls in it. All doubts and fears and hates and cries, all deadnesses flowed around me, took possession of me.Then I remembered the iron and wood faces of the men, gr...
No one seems to believe in appreciating--appreciating more than one thing, at least. The practical disappearance in any vital form of the lecture-lyceum, the sermon, the essay, and the poem, the annihilation of the imagination or organ of comprehension, the disappearance of personality, the abolition of the editorial, ...
Whether it is true or not that the universe is most swiftly known, most naturally enjoyed as related to one Creator or Person, as the self-expression of one Being who loved all these things enough to gather them together, it is generally admitted that the natural man seems to have been created to enjoy a universe as re...
And when I had looked boldly (almost scientifically) at this title-page, let it mock me a little, had laughed and sighed over it, as I ought, there came a great hush from I know not where. I remembered it was the title, after all, for better or worse, in some sort or another, of every book I had craved and delighted in...
"Early education," says President Thwing, "occupies itself with description (geometry, space, arithmetic, time, science, the world of nature). Later education with comparison and relations." If one asks, "Why not both together? Why learn facts at one time and their relations at another? Is it not the most vital possibl...
There is a spirit in this book, struggling down underneath it, which neither I nor any other man shall ever express. It needs a nation to express it, a nation fearless to know itself, a great, joyous, trustful, expectant nation. The centuries break away. I almost see it now, lifting itself in its plains and hills and f...
The main difference between a great man and a little one is a matter of time. If the little man could keep his organs going, could keep on experiencing, acting, and reacting on things for four thousand years, he would have no difficulty in being as great as some men are in their threescore and ten. All genius is inheri...
1. There is nothing so practical as an ideal, for if through his personality and imagination a man can be made to see an ideal, the ideal does itself; that is, it takes hold of him and inspires him to do it and to find means for doing it. This is what has been aimed at in this book.2. The first and most practical thing...
The emphasis which would seem to be most to the point in civilisation is that people must enjoy something, something of their very own, even if it is only their sins, if they can do no better, and they are their own. It would be a beginning. They could work out from that. They would get the idea. Some one has said that...
"A most interesting and instructive volume, which presents an intimate view of the social habits and manner of thought of the people of which it treats."--_Buffalo Express_."A book full of information, comprehensive and accurate. Its numerous attractive illustrations add to its interest and value. We are glad to welcom...
Produced by Sankar Viswanathan, Suzanne Shell, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net[Illustration: Bela (Colleen Moore) says to Gladding (Lloyd Hughes): "Fine surprise um white man."(_Photoplay Edition--"The Huntress"_) (_A First National Picture_)]THE HUNTRESSBy HULBERT FOOTNERAUTHOR OF_"...
He had taught Bela to speak English. Bela's first-hand observations of the great white race had been limited to half a score of individuals--priests, policemen, and traders.The row in Charley's teepee had started early that morning. Charley, bringing in a couple of skunks from his traps, had ordered Bela to skin them a...
"He was good to me. Not like Indian husband. He like dress me up fine. All the time laugh and make jokes. He call me 'Tagger-Leelee.'""Did he go away?"Loseis shook her head. "Go through the ice with his team.""Under the water--my father," murmured Bela.She turned on her mother accusingly. "You have good white husband, ...
"One day come big storm wit' snow. He got lost out on the ice wit' his team and drive in airhole. We find the hay floating after. He never see you. You come in the spring. He was a fine man. That is all."After a silence Musq'oosis said: "Well, what you think? What you goin' do?""I goin' outside," Bela promptly answered...
Bela's instinct was to run away to examine her prize in secret. As she rose the old man pointed a portentous finger."Remember what I tell you! You got mak' yourself hard to get."During the rest of the day Bela was unobtrusively busy with her preparations for the journey. Like any girl, red or white, she had her little ...
It had an electrical effect on the four men. Each made believe he had heard nothing. Big Jack and Shand stared self-consciously into the fire. Husky's hands holding the cards shook, and his face changed colour. Joe lifted a livid white face, and his eyes rolled wildly. He clutched the blankets and bit his lip to keep f...
"Couldn't tell you; just a shadow. This morning I was shaving outside. Had my mirror hanging from a branch around by the shore. I was nervous account of this, and I cut myself. See, there's the mark. I come to the house to get a rag."You was all in plain sight--cookee inside, Jack and Husky sittin' at the door waitin' ...
"What'll I do then?" asked Jack hopelessly."Try her with sign language.""Sure," said Jack. He looked around for the table. "Oh, hell, it's burnt up! We'll have to eat on the floor. Hey, look, sister!" He went through the motions of spreading a table and eating. The others watched interestedly. "Will you?" he asked.She ...
The four men who, for the past week, had been sunk in utter boredom, naturally reacted to the other extreme of hilarity. Loud laughter filled the cabin. The potentialities for trouble were not, however, lessened. On the contrary, a look or a word was enough at any moment to bring a snarling pair face to face. Presently...
Jack laughed scornfully. "What's the matter with you? 'Tain't the first time you've played with them. There's only the one pair. We've all got to use them alike.""Let me see them!" persisted Husky, showing his teeth. "It's my right!"Jack shrugged, and the bone cubes were solemnly passed from hand to hand."You can't sho...
They seized Sam between them and started to drag him toward the door. Sam struggled desperately and vainly in their grasp. Joe, attracted by the raised voices, had run in again. He, for his own ends, showed a disposition to help Sam. Jack overawed him with a look."Come along," he commanded.The girl showed no further co...
When it was all done, she made for the door again as coolly as she had come. Sam experienced a sudden sinking of the heart."Are you going?" he cried involuntarily.Big Jack jumped up at the same moment. "Don't go yet," he begged.Jack and the others had recovered sufficiently from the shock of their surprise to discuss i...
"Sure thing! Say this is going to be out o' sight! You certainly have a good knack of making things, Jack.""Oh, so-so. I ought to have a flat piece to put on the seat.""I'll go out to the stable and see if I can find a box-cover.""You stay here. I'll go," said Joe.Sam, washing the dishes, harkened to this, and smiled a...
Her eyes were as clear as the lake waters. Joe's fell before them. He went sullenly back and shouted in the door of the shack.CHAPTER VIITHE SUITORSThe day started well, with Big Jack, Shand, and Joe all on their good behaviour. But it was too good to last. Watching Bela's graceful movements before the fire, and eating...
"They're gone!" he cried blankly.Following his eyes, they saw that the corner was empty. Their thoughts took a sharp turn. They glanced at each other suspiciously.Joe's anger blazed up afresh."You did it, you traitor!" he cried, whirling around on Shand."You made way with the guns so you could pick us off one by one! Y...
"They fixed this up when I was asleep," he stuttered. "Sprung it on me unawares. Me just out of a sick-bed, not shaved nor slicked up nor nothin'. 'Tain't fair! I ain't had no chance to think of anything to say. Made me speak first, too. How do I know what they're goin' to say after me? Tain't fair! I'm as good as any ...
A woman who took her pleasure in provoking four men to the point of murder was not worth bothering about, he told himself a hundred times; but he continued to be very much bothered."I'll never let her get me on her hook!" he cried inwardly--meanwhile the hook was in his gills!After he had given the men their dinner he,...
Sam began to think she had done it on purpose, and said so."No! No!" gasped Bela. She pointed across the creek. "Shallow there. You can step in easy."Sam, full of dignity, waded out and started home.Bela was suddenly sobered. "Wait!" she cried. "Ain't you comin' wit' me?"He affected not to hear her."I sorry I laugh," s...
"My brothers took me up one after another. They're all well-to-do. One is president of an electric-light plant, one is a corporation lawyer, the other runs a big store. Keen on business, all of them. I tried to make good with each one, honest I did. But I sickened in offices. My brain seemed to turn to mush. Impossible...
"I jus' foolin' 'bout those ot'er men," she said. "I not marry one of them. I sooner jump in the lak'."A secret spring of gladness spurted up in Sam's breast. "Do you mean that?" he demanded."I mean it," she replied.He gazed at her, strongly desiring to believe, but suspicious still. His slower nature could not credit ...
"Here's the mark of a boat, too, in the sand," he cried. "I knew it! Gone together in her boat!""It was a man's voice I heard," objected Jack. "What for would he want to cry out?""Wanted to give us the laugh when he saw his get-a-way clear," said Joe bitterly. "Oh, damn him!""As soon as it's light----" muttered Shand, ...
It seemed like a miracle the little craft had survived so long. One glance at the shore showed him why they could not land. He fell back, and his hands flew to the knot behind his head. He tore off the gag and threw it overboard. Bela looked at him for the fraction of a second."Well, what's your game?" he bitterly dema...
Not Big Jack nor Shand, perhaps, but Joe was not to be trusted. But surely they would see he was a prisoner. Something of the kind must have been passing through Bela's mind. Putting down her paddle for a moment, she threw back the blankets and drew out her gun. It had been carefully protected from the water. She laid ...
She burst out laughing. Sam turned beet colour and, scowling like a pirate, tried to carry it off with dignity."Don't be mad at me," she begged, struggling with her laughter. "You so fonny, run away. Here's your breakfast. It's cold now. You can bring it to the fire."There was bread and smoked fish on the plate she was...
She came to the end of her song, and presently started another, a more rollicking air, but still charged with wistfulness. Who had taught her those hushed, thrilling tones? Sam recognized this air, too, and thought of the mother who had sung it to him years ago.It was "Twickenham Ferry." Why that of all songs? he wonde...
"Oh! I'm sorry, too," he said in an uncertain voice--and regretfully. "If you're like that--if you're on the square. Something might have come of it. But you've spoiled it. You've put me on my guard against you for ever. A man has his pride. A man has to choose. He can't submit to a woman. You wouldn't want a tame man....
"I can't stand it!" he cried shakily. "I don't care about myself, but I can't see a woman sacrificed--even if it's your own mulishness! I don't care about you, either--but you're a woman. You needn't think you're getting the best of me. I'll hate you for this--but I can't stand it!"Bela sprang up swiftly and resolutely...
"I'll have to be leaving you," said Sam mockingly. "I'm going the other way. To the head of the lake.""If you go back they catch you.""I'll lie low till they're thrown off the scent. I'll walk around the north shore.""If you stay with me little while, pretty soon we meet police comin' up," she suggested. "Then they can...
"Soon as the wind begin to blow he cut me loose," she said. "He can't mak' the boat go. He tak' my gun and point to me and mak' me paddle.""The damned blackguard!" muttered Shand.Jack was still unconvinced. "But to-day," he said, "when my oar busted you laughed. I was lookin' at you."Bela hung her head. "He tak' me awa...
He submitted to superior force, and they immediately started back on the long walk to the boats. There was little said _en route_. Only Joe, unable to contain his rancour, occasionally burst out in brutal reviling. Sam smiled at him. More than once Big Jack was called on to restrain Joe's fist."A bargain is a bargain,"...
His hands helped out his tongue in the immemorial Latin style. Though he was the father of four strapping sons and several marriageable girls, not to speak of the smaller fry, time had left surprisingly few marks on him.Johnny held up his hands at the sight of Sam, bound. He was delighted to have this additional excite...
"Aristide! Michel! Maria!" shrieked Johnny. "Run, you turtles! Carry ever't'ing outside. Tak' down the stove!"Bishop Lajeunesse went to Bela with kind eyes."My poor girl!" he said in her own tongue. "Have you had a bad time?""Wait," murmured Bela deprecatingly. "I tell everything in there.""Mercy! Abducted!" cried Miss...
The bishop, watching Bela, was sadly puzzled. Poor Bela herself, if he had known, was confused between the truths and the untruths."Why should they want to hurt him?" demanded Coulson."I don' know." Here she was evasive again."What were you doing in their camp in the first place?" he asked."I jus' travellin'," said Bel...
Sitting at the door of his teepee, Bela said: "Let me eat. I have nothing since I get up to-day."He put bread and smoked moose meat before her, and went on knotting his cords with an unconcerned air.By and by Bela began to tell her story with the sullen, self-conscious air of a child expecting a scolding. But as she we...
They settled down for a good talk by the fire. Musq'oosis continued to surprise Sam. On his visit to Nine-Mile Point the old man had been received with good-natured banter, which he returned in kind. Alone with Sam, he came out in quite a different character.Sam made the discovery that a man may have dark skin yet be a...
"Lord, man!" said Mahooley. "Don't you see me here twiddling my thumbs. What for should I hire anybody? To twiddle 'em for me, maybe.""You'll have a crowd here soon," persisted Sam. "Four men on their way in to take up land, and others following. There's a surveying gang coming up the river, too.""Moreover, you ain't g...