Windfalls

I think this book belongs to you because, if it can be said to be about anything in particular--which it cannot--it is, in spite of its delusive title, about bees, and as I cann...

If you compare his morals with those of the honey bee, of course, he cuts a poor figure. The bee never goes on the spree. It avoids beer like poison, and keeps decorously outsid...

Was it not Wilfred Scawen Blunt who contemplated an eternity in which, once in a hundred years, he would wake and say, “Are you there, beloved?” and hear the reply, “Yes, belove...

But to-day warms even her bleak life, and reconciles her to her enemy. When she brings a basket of eggs to the cottage she observes that “it is a bit better to-day.” This is the...

We think better of the tipsy gentleman in the tall hat. His speech is that of the politest people on earth. His good humour goes to the heart. He is like Dick Steele--“when he w...

If in such a matter as the use of salt, which ought to be reducible to a scientific formula it is so hard to come at the plain truth of things, we cannot wonder that it dodges u...

The day before our arrival there had been a visitor to the house, an old gentleman who had wandered in the grounds and sat and mused in the little arbour that Jenny Lind built,...

The truth, of course, is that such a man could never possess anything in the only sense that matters. For possession is a spiritual and not a material thing. I do not own--to ta...

All nations are afflicted with egoism. It is the national egoism of Prussia that has just brought it to such catastrophic ruin. The Frenchman entertains the firm conviction that...

I have long promised myself that I would see it. Some day, I have said, I will surely have a look at this place. It is a shame, I have said, to have lived in it so long and neve...

And as, in the afternoon of another day, brilliant, and crisp with the breath of winter, you thread your way once more through the populous waters of the noble harbour and make...

I am told by one who worked with him, that old Lord Strathcona knew the trick quite well, and used it unblushingly. When a visitor was announced he tumbled his papers about in i...

The glove is thrown down. We take it up. We send back yell for yell, roar for roar. Three cheerleaders leap out on the greensward in front of us, and to their screams of command...

What is this instinct that makes us carve our names on tree trunks, and school desks with such elaborate care? It is no modern vulgarity. It is as ancient as human records. In t...

As I reached this depressing conclusion--not a novel or original one, but always a rather cheerless one--a sort of orphaned feeling stole over me. I seemed like a poor bereaved...

The vision is always fresh, and full of wonder. Take a familiar example. Who, crossing the Channel after however short an absence, can catch the first glimpse of the white cliff...