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In some natures there are no half-tones; nothing but raw primary colours. John Bodman was a man who was always at one extreme or the other.

"Good-bye, Yegor Vlassitch," whispered Pelagea, and she stood on tiptoe to see the white cap once more.

The drawing-room was small, full of heavy draperies and discreetly fragrant.

Out of the low window could be seen three hickory trees placed irregularly in a meadow that was resplendent in spring-time green.

SHE sat at the window watching the evening invade the avenue. Her head was leaned against the window curtains and in her nostrils was the odour of dusty cretonne. She was tired.

What! Have you never heard the story of the Man in the Moon? Then I must surely tell it, for it is very amusing, and there is not a word of truth in it.

Conradin was ten years old, and the doctor had pronounced his professional opinion that the boy would not live another five years.

In 1830, only a few miles away from what is now the great city of Cincinnati, lay an immense and almost unbroken forest.

If you had seen little Jo standing at the street corner in the rain, you would hardly have admired him.

Lady Carlotta stepped out on to the platform of the small wayside station and took a turn or two up and down its uninteresting length, to kill time till the train should be pleased to proceed on its way.

In a first-class carriage of a train speeding Balkanward across the flat, green Hungarian plain two Britons sat in friendly, fitful converse.

That was the time for the bright visionary Christmases which have long arisen from us to show faintly, after summer rain, in the palest edges of the rainbow!