The Angel and the Author, and Others

A friend of mine thinks it a pity that we have lost our tails. He argues it would be so helpful if, like the dog, we possessed a tail that wagged when we were pleased, that stuc...

"They do say," remarked Mrs. Wilkins, as she took the cover off the dish and gave a finishing polish to my plate with the cleanest corner of her apron, "that 'addicks, leastways...

I would be so glad to believe in ghosts. This world is much too small for me. Up to a century or two ago the intellectual young man found it sufficient for his purposes. It stil...

My heart has been much torn of late, reading of the wrongs of Children. It has lately been discovered that Children are being hampered and harassed in their career by certain br...

How young we are, how very young! And think of all we have done! Man is still a mere boy. He has only just within the last half-century been put into trousers. Two thousand year...

When I was younger, reading the popular novel used to make me sad. I find it vexes others also. I was talking to a bright young girl upon the subject not so very long ago.

I am sorry to be compelled to cast a slur upon the Literary profession, but observation shows me that it still contains within its ranks writers born and bred in, and moving ami...

"Well," asked the youthful diplomatist who had been told off to show him round, as on the deck of the steamer they shook hands, "what do you now think of England?"

Perhaps that is really the Problem: who was responsible for the heroine's past? Was it her father? She does not say so--not in so many words. That is not her way. It is not for...

The question, in four-inch letters, exhibited on a placard outside a small newsvendor's shop, caught recently my eye. The wanderer through London streets is familiar with such-l...

Marriages are made in heaven--"but solely," it has been added by a cynical writer, "for export." There is nothing more remarkable in human sociology than our attitude towards th...

They are odd folk, these foreigners. There are moments of despair when I almost give them up--feel I don't care what becomes of them--feel as if I could let them muddle on in th...

Philosophy, it has been said, is the art of bearing other people's troubles. The truest philosopher I ever heard of was a woman. She was brought into the London Hospital sufferi...

That is what the European girl wants to know. The American girl! She comes over here, and, as a British matron, reduced to slang by force of indignation, once exclaimed to me: "...

There is one thing that the Anglo-Saxon does better than the "French, or Turk, or Rooshian," to which add the German or the Belgian. When the Anglo-Saxon appoints an official, h...

What's wrong with the "Made-up Tie"? I gather from the fashionable novelist that no man can wear a made-up tie and be a gentleman. He may be a worthy man, clever, well-to-do, el...

The postcard craze is dying out in Germany--the land of its birth--I am told. In Germany they do things thoroughly, or not at all. The German when he took to sending postcards a...

I had a vexing dream one night, not long ago: it was about a fortnight after Christmas. I dreamt I flew out of the window in my nightshirt. I went up and up. I was glad that I w...

His very breathing--regular, harmonious, penetrating, instinct as it is with all the better attributes of a well-preserved grandfather's clock--conveys suggestion of dignity and...

Where Civilization fails is in not providing men and women with sufficient work. In the Stone Age man was, one imagines, kept busy. When he was not looking for his dinner, or ea...