文摘

As the Romans grew prouder and more fond of pleasure, no one could hope to please them who did not give them sports and entertainments.

All the relations in the neighborhood had come to dinner, and then gone back to their own houses, but some of the relations had come from a distance, and these had to stay all night at the grandfather's.

The little girl came into her papa's study, as she always did Saturday morning before breakfast, and asked for a story.

WHEN dear old Mrs. Hay went back to town after staying with the Burnells she sent the children a doll's house.

IT WAS a dark autumn night. The old banker was walking up and down his study and remembering how, fifteen years before, he had given a party one autumn evening.

The girl was one of those pretty and charming young creatures who sometimes are born, as if by a slip of fate, into a family of clerks.

Two men in a smoking-room were talking of their private-school days. ‘At our school,’ said A., ‘we had a ghost’s footmark on the staircase.

Of course the Widow Stimson never tried to win Deacon Hawkins, nor any other man, for that matter.

IT was Christmas Eve. Marya had long been snoring on the stove; all the paraffin in the little lamp had burnt out, but Fyodor Nilov still sat at work.