Life's Handicap: Being Stories of Mine Own People

‘Wid that I tuk off my gloves--there was pipe-clay in thim, so that they stud alone--an’ pulled up my chair, lookin’ round at the china ornaments an’ bits av things in the Shadd...

Namgay Doola had scrambled out on the jam and was clawing out the butt of a log with a rude sort of boat-hook. It slid forward slowly as an alligator moves, three or four others...

‘Lord of my life, it cannot be. I have prayed for so many nights, and sent gifts to Sheikh Badl’s shrine so often, that I know God will give us a son--a man-child that shall gro...

Pay-day came, and with it beer. It was not in experience to hope that Mulvaney, dried by four weeks’ drought, would avoid excess. Next morning he and the palanquin had disappear...

When he was advanced to the dignity of a silver belt--which, with a magic square engraved on silver and hung round his neck, made up the greater part of his clothing--he stagger...

I met him at the corner of my garden, an empty basket on his head, and an unclean cloth round his loins. That was all the property to which Naboth had the shadow of a claim when...

In Northern India stood a monastery called The Chubara of Dhunni Bhagat. No one remembered who or what Dhunni Bhagat had been. He had lived his life, made a little money and spe...

Dan Grady chuckled as he blew for the fiftieth time into the breech of his speckless rifle. Mulcahy groaned and buried his head in his arms till a stray shot spoke like a snipe...

His Royal Highness Abdur Rahman, Amir of Afghanistan, G.C.S.I., and trusted ally of Her Imperial Majesty the Queen of England and Empress of India, is a gentleman for whom all r...

‘If you go once round the world in an easterly direction, you gain one day,’ said the men of science to John Hay. In after years John Hay went east, west, north, and south, tran...

I lived in that house for two days. Strickland went to his office daily, leaving me alone for eight or ten hours with Tietjens for my only companion. As long as the full light l...

‘Then my lie an’ my sunstroke is concealed under that lump av sod yonder,’ retorted Mulvaney unruffled, nodding across the scrub. ‘An’ there’s a dale more in nature than your sq...

There was a thick sick cough, and the body of the African slid slowly from the bed, his clutching hands letting fall a shower of silver pieces that ran across the room.

Omitting all else, this tale begins with the Lamentable Thirst that was at the beginning of First Causes. Never was such a thirst--Mulvaney told me so. They kicked against their...

‘They said I mun give him up ‘cause he were worldly and low; and would I let mysen be shut out of heaven for the sake on a dog? “Nay,” says I, “if th’ door isn’t wide enough for...

My girl she give me the go onst, When I was a London lad, An’ I went on the drink for a fortnight, An’ then I went to the bad. The Queen she give me a shillin’ To fight for ‘er...

Four men, each entitled to ‘life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,’ sat at a table playing whist. The thermometer marked--for them--one hundred and one degrees of heat. Th...

The only persons who did not share the general regard for the White Hussars were a few thousand gentlemen of Jewish extraction who lived across the border, and answered to the n...

Be pleased to consider here for a moment the unknown district of Kot-Kumharsen. It lay cut lengthways by the Indus under the line of the Khusru hills--ramparts of useless earth...

The pitiless Moon shows it all. Shows, too, the plains outside the city, and here and there a hand’s-breadth of the Ravee without the walls. Shows lastly, a splash of glittering...

They ordered him up--a slim, slight, dark-haired young man, devoured with that blind rancorous hatred of England that only reaches its full growth across the Atlantic. He had su...

Fleete came, and when the lamps were brought, we saw that he was literally plastered with dirt from head to foot. He must have been rolling in the garden. He shrank from the lig...

‘By Jove! I forgot. Of course. Happy to meet you, old man, any time you like. Got everything you want? Cheroots, ice, bedding? That’s all right. Well, au revoir, Dirkovitch.’

‘Bromide of skittles! Why didn’t you tell me this before? Let go of my arm, and I’ll see if there’s anything in my cigarette-case to suit your complaint.’ Spurstow hunted among...

‘My friend,’ said Hans, composedly stretching himself to slumber, ‘it was not nice even to mineself dot I should live after I haf seen dot room mit der hole in der thatch. Und B...