If a personal and autocratic governmen

It is not merely that the form of constitution, which we call ‘democracy,’ is obviously not the best fitted for governing an uncivilised or half-civilised people. There are considerations which go much deeper than that—considerations of race, religion, temperament, and tradition. As it has been in the past, so conceivably it may be again in…

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they inherited from their mother

About a year and a half afterwards the tables were turned on Battersby — for Mrs. John Pontifex was safely delivered of a boy. A year or so later still, George Pontifex was himself struck down suddenly by a fit of paralysis, much as his mother had been, but he did not see the years…

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After a day or two in the camp

And here, as you may easily guess, the adventures of the Boy Inventors in Brazil practically came to an end. Soon after the discovery of the giant sloth—which was a young and not fully grown specimen—the engine was put in order and the trip to the coast resumed. Of course the entire carcass was taken,…

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until they were released

The time of the arrival of the English captains at Mexico seems to have been about the first of the year. They received no definite answer to the question whether their ships should be condemned or released until late in April. The Viceroy was waiting for an answer from the home Government to the first…

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The first English expedition

The fur trade between the western coast of America and China was at the time in its infancy, but the profits accruing from it soon made it of great importance. Captain Cook, in his voyage of 1778, had brought the possibility of the industry to the attention of English shipowners. “By the accidental carrying away…

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Not one of those ponderous

We are prepared as no other age has ever been for a carnival in the grand style, for the most spiritual festival-laughter and arrogance, for the transcendental height of supreme folly and Aristophanic ridicule of the world. Perhaps we are still discovering the domain of our invention just here, the domain where even we can…

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an ultimatum

Seventeen years earlier, Jobs’s parents had made a pledge when they adopted him: He would go to college. So they had worked hard and saved dutifully for his college fund, which was modest but adequate by the time he graduated. But Jobs, becoming ever more willful, did not make it easy. At first he toyed…

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set along the walls

I see them wheel him through a set of double doors and I follow. I burst through the doors, the smell of iodine and peroxide hits me, but all I have time to see is two men wearing surgical caps and a woman in green huddling over a gurney. A white sheet spills over the…

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I took from my pocket

  He looked up at me, scanning my face with earnest curiosity. first a jewel of very exquisite construction, a butterfly of turquoise, pearl, and rubies, set on an emerald branch, upon which he looked without admiration or interest, then a watch very small and elaborately enamelled and jewelled. To the ornament he paid no…

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