短篇小说

It was night. Stillness reigned in the grand old feudal castle of Klugenstein. The year 1222 was drawing to a close. Far away up in the tallest of the castle's towers a single light glimmered. A secret council was being held there.

Sir,--Prices for the customary kinds of winter fuel having reached an altitude which puts them out of the reach of literary persons in straitened circumstances, I desire to place with you the following order:

Mark Twain wrote this letter to his 3 year old daughter from Santa Claus in 1875. You could say he was over the moon for her.

Dear Sir and Kinsman,--Let us have done with this frivolous talk. The American Board accepts contributions from me every year: then why shouldn't it from Mr. Rockefeller?

Once or twice a year I get a letter of a certain pattern, a pattern that never materially changes, in form and substance, yet I cannot get used to that letter--it always astonishes me.

I took a large room, far up Broadway, in a huge old building whose upper stories had been wholly unoccupied for years until I came.

A grand affair of a ball--the Pioneers'--came off at the Occidental some time ago. The following notes of the costumes worn by the belles of the occasion may not be uninteresting to the general reader, and Jenkins may get an idea therefrom:

MR. CHAIRMAN AND LADIES AND GENTLEMEN: I thank you for the compliment which has just been tendered me, and to show my appreciation of it I will not afflict you with many words.

John Wagner, the oldest man in Buffalo--one hundred and four years old --recently walked a mile and a half in two weeks.

At General G----'s reception the other night, the most fashionably dressed lady was Mrs. G. C. She wore a pink satin dress, plain in front but with a good deal of rake to it--to the train, I mean; it was said to be two or three yards long.