"The Mysterious Affair at Styles" is a detective novel by Agatha Christie. It was written in the middle of the First World War, in 1916, and first published by John Lane in the United States in October 1920 and in the United Kingdom by The Bodley Head (John Lane's UK company) on 21 January 1921. The US edition retailed at $2.00 and the UK edition at seven shillings and sixpence (7/6).Styles was Christie's first published novel. It introduced Hercule Poirot, Inspector (later, Chief Inspector) Japp, and Arthur Hastings. Poirot, a Belgian refugee of the Great War, is settling in England near the home of Emily Inglethorp, who helped him to his new life. His friend Hastings arrives as a guest at her home. When the woman is killed, Poirot uses his detective skills to solve the mystery. This is also the setting of "Curtain", Poirot's last case.The book includes maps of the house, the murder scene, and a drawing of a fragment of a will. The true first publication of the novel was as a weekly serial in the "The Times", including the maps of the house and other illustrations included in the book. This novel was one of the first ten books published by Penguin Books when it began in 1935.

"The Secret Adversary" is the second published detective fiction novel by Agatha Christie, first published in January 1922 in the United Kingdom by The Bodley Head and in the United States by Dodd, Mead and Company later in that same year. The UK edition retailed at seven shillings and sixpence (7/6) and the US edition at $1.75.The book introduces the characters of Tommy and Tuppence who feature in three other Christie novels and one collection of short stories; the five Tommy and Tuppence books span Agatha Christie's writing career. The Great War is over, and jobs are scarce. Tommy Beresford and Prudence "Tuppence" Cowley meet and agree to start their own business as The Young Adventurers. They are hired for a job that leads them both to many dangerous situations, meeting allies as well, including an American millionaire in search of his cousin.

To Rosamund, chief among those for whom these tales are told, The Book of Dragons is dedicated in the confident hope that she, one of these days, will dedicate a book of her very own making to the one who now bids eight dreadful dragons crouch in all humbleness at those little brown feet. ? To Rosamund, chief among those for whom these tales are told, The Book of Dragons is dedicated in the confident hope that she, one of these days, will dedicate a book of her very own making to the one who now bids eight dreadful dragons crouch in all humbleness at those little brown feet. The Book of Beasts: He happened to be building a Palace when the news came, and he left all the bricks kicking about the floor for Nurse to clear up—but then the news was rather remarkable news. You see, there was a knock at the front door and voices talking downstairs, and Lionel thought it was the man come to see about the gas, which had not been allowed to be lighted since the day when Lionel made a swing by tying his skipping rope to the gas bracket. And then, quite suddenly, Nurse came in and said, "Master Lionel, dear, they've come to fetch you to go and be King." Then she made haste to change his smock and to wash his face and hands and brush his hair, and all the time she was doing it Lionel kept wriggling and fidgeting and saying, "Oh, don't, Nurse," and, "I'm sure my ears are quite clean," or, "Never mind my hair, it's all right," and, "That'll do." "You're going on as if you was going to be an eel instead of a King," said Nurse. The minute Nurse let go for a moment Lionel bolted off without waiting for his clean handkerchief, and in the drawing room there were two very grave-looking gentlemen in red robes with fur, and gold coronets with velvet sticking up out of the middle like the cream in the very expensive jam tarts. They bowed low to Lionel, and the gravest one said: "Sire, your great-great-great-great-great-grandfather, the King of this country, is dead, and now you have got to come and be King." "Yes, please, sir," said Lionel, "when does it begin?" "You will be crowned this afternoon," said the grave gentleman who was not quite so grave-looking as the other. "Would you like me to bring Nurse, or what time would you like me to be fetched, and hadn't I better put on my velvet suit with the lace collar?" said Lionel, who had often been out to tea. "Your Nurse will be removed to the Palace later. No, never mind about changing your suit; the Royal robes will cover all that up." The grave gentlemen led the way to a coach with eight white horses, which was drawn up in front of the house where Lionel lived. It was No. 7, on the left-hand side of the street as you go up. Lionel ran upstairs at the last minute, and he kissed Nurse and said: "Thank you for washing me. I wish I'd let you do the other ear. No—there's no time now. Give me the hanky. Good-bye, Nurse."

There is a woman in the state of Nevada to whom I once lied continuously, consistently, and shamelessly, for the matter of a couple of hours. I don't want to apologize to her. Far be it from me. But I do want to explain. Unfortunately, I do not know her name, much less her present address. If her eyes should chance upon these lines, I hope she will write to me.It was in Reno, Nevada, in the summer of 1892. Also, it was fair-time, and the town was filled with petty crooks and tin-horns, to say nothing of a vast and hungry horde of hoboes. It was the hungry hoboes that made the town a "hungry" town. They "battered" the back doors of the homes of the citizens until the back doors became unresponsive.A hard town for "scoffings," was what the hoboes called it at that time. I know that I missed many a meal, in spite of the fact that I could "throw my feet" with the next one when it came to "slamming a gate for a "poke-out" or a "set-down," "or hitting for a light piece" on the street. Why, I was so hard put in that town, one day, that I gave the porter the slip and invaded the private car of some itinerant millionnaire. The train started as I made the platform, and I headed for the aforesaid millionnaire with the porter one jump behind and reaching for me. It was a dead heat, for I reached the millionnaire at the same instant that the porter reached me. I had no time for formalities. "Gimme a quarter to eat on," I blurted out. And as I live, that millionnaire dipped into his pocket and gave me ... just ... precisely ... a quarter. It is my conviction that he was so flabbergasted that he obeyed automatically, and it has been a matter of keen regret ever since, on my part, that I didn't ask him for a dollar. I know that I'd have got it. I swung off the platform of that private car with the porter manoeuvering to kick me in the face. He missed me. One is at a terrible disadvantage when trying to swing off the lowest step of a car and not break his neck on the right of way, with, at the same time, an irate Ethiopian on the platform above trying to land him in the face with a number eleven. But I got the quarter! I got it!But to return to the woman to whom I so shamelessly lied. It was in the evening of my last day in Reno. I had been out to the race-track watching the ponies run, and had missed my dinner (i.e. the midday meal). I was hungry, and, furthermore, a committee of public safety had just been organized to rid the town of just such hungry mortals as I. Already a lot of my brother hoboes had been gathered in by John Law, and I could hear the sunny valleys of California calling to me over the cold crests of the Sierras. Two acts remained for me to perform before I shook the dust of Reno from my feet. One was to catch the blind baggage on the westbound overland that night. The other was first to get something to eat. Even youth will hesitate at an all-night ride, on an empty stomach, outside a train that is tearing the atmosphere through the snow-sheds, tunnels, and eternal snows of heaven-aspiring mountains.But that something to eat was a hard proposition. I was "turned down" at a dozen houses. Sometimes I received insulting remarks and was informed of the barred domicile that should be mine if I had my just deserts. The worst of it was that such assertions were only too true. That was why I was pulling west that night. John Law was abroad in the town, seeking eagerly for the hungry and homeless, for by such was his barred domicile tenanted.At other houses the doors were slammed in my face, cutting short my politely and humbly couched request for something to eat. At one house they did not open the door. I stood on the porch and knocked, and they looked out at me through the window. They even held one sturdy little boy aloft so that he could see over the shoulders of his elders the tramp who wasn't going to get anything to eat at their house.

THE WORLD SET FREE was written in 1913 and published early in 1914, and it is the latest of a series of three fantasias of possibility, stories which all turn on the possible developments in the future of some contemporary force or group of forces. The World Set Free was written under the immediate shadow of the Great War. Every intelligent person in the world felt that disaster was impending and knew no way of averting it, but few of us realised in the earlier half of 1914 how near the crash was to us. The reader will be amused to find that here it is put off until the year 1956. He may naturally want to know the reason for what will seem now a quite extraordinary delay. As a prophet, the author must confess he has always been inclined to be rather a slow prophet. The war aeroplane in the world of reality, for example, beat the forecast in Anticipations by about twenty years or so. I suppose a desire not to shock the sceptical reader's sense of use and wont and perhaps a less creditable disposition to hedge, have something to do with this dating forward of one's main events, but in the particular case of The World Set Free there was, I think, another motive in holding the Great War back, and that was to allow the chemist to get well forward with his discovery of the release of atomic energy. 1956—or for that matter 2056—may be none too late for that crowning revolution in human potentialities. And apart from this procrastination of over forty years, the guess at the opening phase of the war was fairly lucky; the forecast of an alliance of the Central Empires, the opening campaign through the Netherlands, and the despatch of the British Expeditionary Force were all justified before the book had been published six months. And the opening section of Chapter the Second remains now, after the reality has happened, a fairly adequate diagnosis of the essentials of the matter. One happy hit (in Chapter the Second, Section 2), on which the writer may congratulate himself, is the forecast that under modern conditions it would be quite impossible for any great general to emerge to supremacy and concentrate the enthusiasm of the armies of either side. There could be no Alexanders or Napoleons. And we soon heard the scientific corps muttering, 'These old fools,' exactly as it is here foretold. These, however, are small details, and the misses in the story far outnumber the hits. It is the main thesis which is still of interest now; the thesis that because of the development of scientific knowledge, separate sovereign states and separate sovereign empires are no longer possible in the world, that to attempt to keep on with the old system is to heap disaster upon disaster for mankind and perhaps to destroy our race altogether. The remaining interest of this book now is the sustained validity of this thesis and the discussion of the possible ending of war on the earth.

Schopenhauer, bir yanda insan zihninin u?a?? olacak denli bedene ya da fiziksel organizmaya ba??ml? oldu?una y?nelik savunusuyla, ?bür yanda isten? ile tutkular?n ?o?unlukla us yoluyla bast?r?l?p ?arp?t?ld???na y?nelik saptamas?yla, Freudcu ruh??zümleme kuram?n? da ?ncelemeyi ba?arm??t?r. Schopenhauer’a g?re “yeter neden ilkesi”nin bütün tasar?mlar?n (ya da g?rüngülerin) kendisine uymak zorunda oldu?u d?rt temel bi?imi vard?r. Schopenhauer, yeter neden ilkesinin k?künü olu?turan bu d?rt temel bi?imi s?ras?yla,? (?) “olu?”; (??) “varolma”; (???) “bilme”; (?v) “eyleme” olarak belirlemi?tir. ??Schopenhauer’in Jeana üniversitesinde doktora tezi olarak sundu?u “Yeter Neden ilkesinin D?rt Sa?akl? K?kü, 1813″ ba?l?kl? ?al??mas?, pek ?ok bak?mdan ya?am?n?n ilerleyen y?llar?nda verece?i felsefe yap?tlar?n?n temelini ‘olu?turmas?yla olduk?a ?nemlidir. Tezin temel sav?, Kant’?n “g?rüngüler (pheinomenon) dünyas?”na kar??l?k gelen “tasar?mlar dünyas?”n?n bütünüyle “yeter neden ilkesi”nce y?netildi?idir. Bu ilkeye g?re, olanakl? bütün nesneler, hem ?teki nesnelerce belirlendikleri hem de kendileri d???ndaki bütün ?teki nesneleri belirledikleri zorunlu bir ili?ki i?inde bulunmaktad?rlar. Dolay?s?yla, her bilin? nesnesi ancak ?teki nesnelerle ili?kisi do?rultusunda a??klanabilirdir. Bu noktada Schopenhauer, ancak bu durumu ba?tan benimsemek ko?uluyla, Kant’?n tan?mlad??? anlamda dünyaya ili?kin birtak?m zorunlu sentetik a priori do?rular?n bilinmesinin olanakl? oldu?u saptamas?nda bulunur. ? ?Schopenhauer, tasar?mlar aras?ndaki bu zorunlu ili?ki türlerinden, §? “olu?”ta nedensellik ilkesi diye de bilinen neden sonu? ili?kisini; §? “varolma”da uzam-zaman ili?kisini; §? “bilme”de ?ncül-sonu? aras?ndaki kavramsal ili?kiyi; §? “eyleme” de eylem-itki ili?kisini temellendirmektedir. ? ????NDEK?LER: ? SHOPENAUER’?N HAYATI ve ?ALI?MALARIA?KIN METAF?Z??? ?ZER?NE?L?M VE ?L?M KORKUSU ?ZER?NE…SHOPENHAUER’IN AHLAK FELSEFES?AHLAKSHOPENHAUER VE KADINLARSHOPENHAUER VE M?Z?K…?STEN? VE TASARIM OLARAK D?NYAYA?AM B?LGEL??? ?ZER?NE AFOR?ZMALAR?L?M ?ZER?NE..SANAT ?ZER?NE..SHOPENHAUER VE D?N ?ZER?NE…SHOPENHAUER’IN C?NNET & C?NAYET FELSEFES?Nietzsche ve Schopenhauer :Hayat?n De?eriSchopenhauer ve H?ristiyanl?k?Ele?tirisi?lk Günah DoktriniHristiyan Ahlak?H?ristiyani ??retilerin Yaratt??? ?eli?kiler:H?ristiyan ??retilerin ?Ahlak ?zerindeki Olumsuz EtkileriH?ristiyanlar Mevcut Olan Ac?lar? ?o?u Zaman Daha da Art?rmaktalar:H?ristiyanl?k ?lüm Korkusunun ?stesinden GelmiyorTarihi Olaylar ile ?rülmü? Yak?n Ba?lant? ve Tarihsel DogmaH?ristiyanl?kta Hayvanlara Kar?? Tutunulan Tav?rSCHOPENHAURDEN ?ZL? S?ZLER…?

Samson and Delilah was written in the year 1917 by David Herbert Lawrence. This book is one of the most popular novels of David Herbert Lawrence, and has been translated into several other languages around the world.This book is published by Booklassic which brings young readers closer to classic literature globally.

If any book could be called legendary, surely it is this one. Its author, Italian diplomat and philosopher Niccolò Machiavelli (1469-1527) considered it his greatest work. Indeed, his thoughts on politics, as laid out so famously in this brief but profound work, have become so synonymous with him that his name has become an adjective: Machiavellian. How is political power achieved? How is it maintained? Though Machiavelli states explicitly that he is not discussing "Republics" here, only "Princedoms", this coldly rational guidebook to taking control and holding onto it contains such universal insights into human nature and the structure of human systems that his "advice" serves equally well in almost any power structure. With applications in such diverse realms as business, the military, even role-playing games, Machiavelli's rules for ruling continue to be required reading for students of politics, philosophy, and ethics.

This is a Pussy called Miss Moppet, she thinks she has heard a mouse!??This is the Mouse peeping out behind the cupboard, and making fun of Miss Moppet. He is not afraid of a kitten.??This is Miss Moppet jumping just too late; she misses the Mouse and hits her own head.??She thinks it is a very hard cupboard!??The Mouse watches Miss Moppet from the top of the cupboard.??Miss Moppet ties up her head in a duster, and sits before the fire.??The Mouse thinks she is looking very ill. ?He comes sliding down the bell-pull.??Miss Moppet looks worse and worse. The Mouse comes a little nearer.??Miss Moppet holds her poor head in her paws, and looks at him through a hole in the duster. The Mouse comes very close.??And then all of a sudden—Miss Moppet jumps upon the Mouse!!

"Gadsby" is a 1939 novel by Ernest Vincent Wright. The plot revolves around the dying fictional city of Branton Hills, which is revitalized thanks to the efforts of protagonist John Gadsby and a youth group he organizes.The novel is written as a lipogram and does not include words that contain the letter "e". Though self-published and little-noticed in its time, the book is a favourite of fans of constrained writing and is a sought-after rarity among some book collectors. Later editions of the book have sometimes carried the alternative subtitle "50,000 Word Novel Without the Letter 'E'". In 1968, the novel entered the public domain in the United States due to failure to renew copyright in the 28th year after publication.

Este Leopardi un poet pesimist, aa cum l-a clasat tradiia Nu. Din perspectiva zilei de azi, el apare mai degrab ca un poet tragic, ca un exponent al categoriilor existeniale fundamentale. Nu moartea ca atare l sperie pe Leopardi, ci murirea, adic manifestarea ei procesual. Tot astfel viaa leopardian este vieuire. Desfurarea acestora e inversat: trirea vieii (vieuirea) e retrospectiv, iar trirea morii (murirea) e perspectiv. Inversiunea ontologic este temeiul mitopo(i)eticii leopardiene. Cartea ne propune un Leopardi modern i postmodern, un spirit intercultural i multicultural n siajul integrrii europene. Nu lipsete, bineneles, odiseea receptrii lui n spaiul cultural romnesc, ca pattern al lirismului arhetipal, alturi de Eminescu.” (Mihai Cimpoi)Un studiu incitant despre unul dintre cei mai mari poei ai lumii.

Trees filtering light onto dapple grass. Trees like tall, languid ladies with feather fans coquetting airily with the ugly roof of the monastery. Trees like butlers, bending courteously over placid walks and paths. Trees, trees over the hills on either side and scattering out in clumps and lines and woods all through eastern Maryland, delicate lace on the hems of many yellow fields, dark opaque backgrounds for flowered bushes or wild climbing garden. Some of the trees were very gay and young, but the monastery trees were older than the monastery which, by true monastic standards, wasn't very old at all. And, as a matter of fact, it wasn't technically called a monastery, but only a seminary; nevertheless it shall be a monastery here despite its Victorian architecture or its Edward VII additions, or even its Woodrow Wilsonian, patented, last-a-century roofing. Out behind was the farm where half a dozen lay brothers were sweating lustily as they moved with deadly efficiency around the vegetable-gardens. To the left, behind a row of elms, was an informal baseball diamond where three novices were being batted out by a fourth, amid great chasings and puffings and blowings. And in front as a great mellow bell boomed the half-hour a swarm of black, human leaves were blown over the checker-board of paths under the courteous trees.Some of these black leaves were very old with cheeks furrowed like the first ripples of a splashed pool. Then there was a scattering of middle-aged leaves whose forms when viewed in profile in their revealing gowns were beginning to be faintly unsymmetrical. These carried thick volumes of Thomas Aquinas and Henry James and Cardinal Mercier and Immanuel Kant and many bulging note-books filled with lecture data.

In 1915 Horace Tarbox was thirteen years old. In that year he took the examinations for entrance to Prince-ton University and received the Grade A—excellent—in C?sar, Cicero, Vergil, Xenophon, Homer, Algebra, Plane Geometry, Solid Geometry, and Chemistry.??Two years later while George M. Cohan was composing "Over There," Horace was leading the sophomore class by several lengths and digging out theses on "The Syllogism as an Obsolete Scholastic Form," and during the battle of Ch?teau-Thierry he was sitting at his desk deciding whether or not to wait until his seventeenth birthday before beginning his series of essays on "The Pragmatic Bias of the New Realists."??After a while some newsboy told him that the war was over, and he was glad, because it meant that Peat Brothers, publishers, would get out their new edition of "Spinoza's Improvement of the Understanding." Wars were all very well in their way, made young men self-reliant or something but Horace felt that he could never forgive the President for allowing a brass band to play under his window the night of the false armistice, causing him to leave three important sentences out of his thesis on "German Idealism."

A room in the down-stairs of a summer cottage. High around the wall runs an art frieze of a fisherman with a pile of nets at his feet and a ship on a crimson ocean, a fisherman with a pile of nets at his feet and a ship on a crimson ocean, a fisherman with a pile of nets at his feet and so on. In one place on the frieze there is an overlapping—here we have half a fisher-man with half a pile of nets at his foot, crowded damply against half a ship on half a crimson ocean. The frieze is not in the plot, but frankly it fascinates me. I could continue indefinitely, but I am distracted by one of the two objects in the room—a blue porcelain bath-tub. It has character, this bath-tub. It is not one of the new racing bodies, but is small with a high tonneau and looks as if it were going to jump; dis-couraged, however, by the shortness of its legs, it has submitted to its environment and to its coat of sky-blue paint. But it grumpily refuses to allow any patron completely to stretch his legs—which brings us neatly to the second object in the room: SHE is a girl—clearly an appendage to the bath-tub, on-ly her head and throat—beautiful girls have throats instead of necks—and a suggestion of shoulder ap-pearing above the side. For the first ten minutes of the play the audience is engrossed in wondering if she really is playing the game fairly and hasn't any clothes on or whether it is being cheated and she is dressed. The girl's name is JULIE MARVIS. From the proud way she sits up in the bath-tub we deduce that she is not very tall and that she carries herself well. When she smiles, her upper tip rolls a little and reminds you of an Easter Bunny, She is within whispering distance of twenty years old.

Jim Powell was a Jelly-bean. Much as I desire to make him an appealing character, I feel that it would be unscrupulous to deceive you on that point. He was a bred-in-the-bone, dyed-in-the-wool, ninety-nine three-quarters per cent Jelly-bean and he grew lazily all during Jelly-bean season, which is every season, down in the land of the Jelly-beans well below the Mason-Dixon line.Now if you call a Memphis man a Jelly-bean he will quite possibly pull a long sinewy rope from his hip pocket and hang you to a convenient telegraph-pole. If you Call a New Orleans man a Jelly-bean he will probably grin and ask you who is taking your girl to the Mardi Gras ball. The particular Jelly-bean patch which produced the protagonist of this history lies somewhere between the two—a little city of forty thousand that has dozed sleepily for forty thousand years in southern Georgia occasionally stirring in its slumbers and muttering something about a war that took place sometime, somewhere, and that everyone else has forgotten long ago.

The clever fox made friends with the crane. The clever fox once had a notion to treat the crane to dinner and went to invite him to her house."Come godfather! Come dear! How I'll entertain you!"The crain went to the dinner party.The clever fox had cooked farina cereal and spread it over a plate.She served it and urged. "Eat, my friend-godfather, I cooked it myself. "

Far out in the ocean the water is as blue as the petals of the loveliest cornflower, and as clear as the purest glass. But it is very deep too. It goes down deeper than any anchor rope will go, and many, many steeples would have to be stacked one on top of another to reach from the bottom to the surface of the sea. It is down there that the sea folk live. Now don't suppose that there are only bare white sands at the bottom of the sea. No indeed! The most marvelous trees and flowers grow down there, with such pliant stalks and leaves that the least stir in the water makes them move about as though they were alive. All sorts of fish, large and small, dart among the branches, just as birds flit through the trees up here. From the deepest spot in the ocean rises the palace of the sea king. Its walls are made of coral and its high pointed windows of the clearest amber, but the roof is made of mussel shells that open and shut with the tide. This is a wonderful sight to see, for every shell holds glistening pearls, any one of which would be the pride of a queen's crown.

ONCE time ago, there lived an old man and old woman. The old man said, "Old woman, make me a little bun." "What can I make it from? I have no flour." "Eh, eh, old woman! Scrape the cupboard, sweep the flour bin, and you will find enough flour. "The old woman picked up a duster, scraped the cupboard, swept the flour bin and gathered about two handfuls of flour. She mixed the dough with sour cream, fried it in butter, and put the bun on the window sill to cool. The bun lay and lay there. Suddenly it rolled off the window sill to the bench, from the bench to the floor, from the floor to the door. Then it rolled over the threshold to the entrance hall, from the entrance hall to the porch, from the porch to the courtyard, from the courtyard trough the gate and on and on.

This don't pretend to be "Literature."??This is just a tale for red-blooded folks who want a story and not just a lot of "psychological" stuff or "analysis."??Boy, you'll love it! Read it here, see it in the movies, play it on the phonograph, run it through the sewing-machine.??* * *??It was night in the mountains of Kentucky. Wild hills rose on all sides. Swift mountain streams flowed rapidly up and down the mountains.?Jemima Tantrum was down at the stream, brewing whiskey at the family still.??She was a typical mountain girl.

SOON, the master stopped discussing a moment, and rang in the footman, and said, "Bury it in the far corner of the garden," and then went on with the discussion, and I trotted after the footman, very happy and grateful, for I knew the puppy was out of its pain now, because it was asleep. We went far down the garden to the farthest end, where the children and the nurse and the puppy and I used to play in the summer in the shade of a great elm, and there the footman dug a hole, and I saw he was going to plant the puppy, and I was glad, because it would grow and come up a fine handsome dog, like Robin Adair, and be a beautiful surprise for the family when they came home; so I tried to help him dig, but my lame leg was no good, being stiff, you know, and you have to have two, or it is no use. When the footman had finished and covered little Robin up, he patted my head, and there were tears in his eyes, and he said: "Poor little DOGGIE, you saved HIS child!" ABOUT AUTHOR: Mark Twain (1835-1910), was an American humorist, satirist, writer, and lecturer. Twain is most noted for his novels Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, which has since been called the Great American Novel, and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. He is also known for his quotations. During his lifetime, Clemens became a friend to presidents, artists, leading industrialists, and European royalty. Clemens enjoyed immense public popularity, and his keen wit and incisive satire earned him praise from both critics and peers. American author William Faulkner called Twain "the father of American literature.”

This book is merely a personal narrative, and not a pretentious history or a philosophical dissertation. It is a record of several years of variegated vagabondizing, and its object is rather to help the resting reader while away an idle hour than afflict him with metaphysics, or goad him with science. Still, there is information in the volume; information concerning an interesting episode in the history of the Far West, about which no books have been written by persons who were on the ground in person, and saw the happenings of the time with their own eyes. I allude to the rise, growth and culmination of the silver-mining fever in Nevada -a curious episode, in some respects; the only one, of its peculiar kind, that has occurred in the land; and the only one, indeed, that is likely to occur in it.Yes, take it all around, there is quite a good deal of information in the book. I regret this very much; but really it could not be helped: information appears to stew out of me naturally, like the precious ottar of roses out of the otter. Sometimes it has seemed to me that I would give worlds if I could retain my facts; but it cannot be. The more I calk up the sources, and the tighter I get, the more I leak wisdom. Therefore, I can only claim indulgence at the hands of the reader, not justification. THE AUTHOR."My brother had just been appointed Secretary of Nevada Territory--?an office of such majesty that it concentrated in itself the duties and dignities of Treasurer, Comptroller, Secretary of State, and Acting Governor in the Governor's absence. A salary of eighteen hundred dollars a year and the title of "Mr. Secretary," gave to the great position an air of wild and imposing grandeur. I was young and ignorant, and I envied my brother. I coveted his distinction and his financial splendor, but particularly and especially the long, strange journey he was going to make, and the curious new world he was going to explore. He was going to travel! I never had been away from home, and that word "travel" had a seductive charm for me. Pretty soon he would be hundreds and hundreds of miles away on the great plains and deserts, and among the mountains of the Far West, and would see buffaloes and Indians, and prairie dogs, and antelopes, and have all kinds of adventures, and may be get hanged or scalped, and have ever such a fine time, and write home and tell us all about it, and be a hero. And he would see the gold mines and the silver mines, and maybe go about of an afternoon when his work was done, and pick up two or three pailfuls of shining slugs, and nuggets of gold and silver on the hillside. And by and by he would become very rich, and return home by sea, and be able to talk as calmly about San Francisco and the ocean, and "the isthmus" as if it was nothing of any consequence to have seen those marvels face to face. What I suffered in contemplating his happiness, pen cannot describe. And so, when he offered me, in cold blood, the sublime position of private secretary under him, it appeared to me that the heavens and the earth passed away, and the firmament was rolled together as a scroll! I had nothing more to desire. My contentment was complete.At the end of an hour or two I was ready for the journey. Not much packing up was necessary, because we were going in the overland stage from the Missouri frontier to Nevada, and passengers were only allowed a small quantity of baggage apiece. There was no Pacific railroad in those fine times of ten or twelve years ago--?not a single rail of it. I only proposed to stay in Nevada three months--?I had no thought of staying longer than that. I meant to see all I could that was new and strange, and then hurry home to business. I little thought that I would not see the end of that three-month pleasure excursion for six or seven uncommonly long years!