The King's Cup-Bearer

A great cry, a piercing cry, raised by hundreds of voices, a cry which resounds through the streets of the city, and which is echoed by the surrounding hills. What can be the ma...

The sky is brilliant and cloudless, the snow-clad mountains stand out clear in the distance, the air is laden with the scent of orange and lemon groves, and the sweet fragrance...

The sea is calm and quiet, blue as the sky above it, not a wave, not a ripple is to be seen; it is smooth as polished silver, shining like a mirror, and peaceful as the still la...

It has been calculated that about 100,000,000 stars can be seen from our world by means of a telescope. Yet who can grasp such a number as that? Which of us can picture in his m...

Lot's wife was changed into a pillar of salt; and if that pillar still remained, we should see her to-day standing in exactly the same attitude in which she was standing when de...

It was midnight in London, in the year 1665. The houses were closed and barred, but strange lurid fires were lighted in every street, a stifling odour of burning pitch and sulph...

Once a year, in the University of Cambridge, there is a grand day called Commemoration Day. On that day, in the middle of the service, in each college chapel a list of honours i...

The great Rab-shakeh, magnificently attired in all the brilliancy of Oriental costume, is walking towards the city gate. Above him stretches the deep blue sky of the East, about...

In the time of the terrible siege of Jerusalem, when the Roman armies surrounded the city, when famine was killing the Jews by hundreds, and when every day the enemy seemed more...

What an objection some people have to strong measures! They see around them, amongst those under their influence, a great deal going on which is downright evil. You call upon th...

How fond people are of collecting old books, and what a large price old books will fetch! Those who are so fortunate as to obtain possession of a book which is four or five hund...

Who was the strongest person who ever lived? Surely there is no difficulty in answering that question, surely there has never been anyone to compare with Samson in wonderful fea...

The Tarpeian Rock was the place where Roman criminals who had been guilty of the crime of treason were executed. They were thrown headlong from this rock into the valley below,...

We all love our native land, our dear old England, yet none of us love it as the Jews loved Jerusalem. We have only to open the Book of Psalms to see how dear the city of their...

We have all read the adventures of Robinson Crusoe, and we have all pitied the man, alone on a desert island, alone without a friend, without a single companion, never hearing a...

Merrily the Christmas bells were chiming in the old city of York, on Christmas morning in the year 1890, speaking gaily and joyfully of the Christmas feast, when suddenly there...