Firefighters let womans house burn after realizing what was inside

THE extreme southwestern corner of Germany is an irregular right-angle, formed by the course of the Rhine. Within this angle and an hypothenuse drawn from the Lake of Constance to Carlsruhe lies a wild mountain-region — a lateral offshoot from the central chain which extends through Europe from west to east — known to all readers of robber-romances as the Black Forest. It is a cold, undulating upland, intersected with deep valleys which descend to the plains of the Rhine and the Danube, and covered with great tracts of fir-forest. Here and there a peak rises high above the general level, the Feldberg attaining a height of five thousand feet. The aspect of this region is stern and gloomy: the fir-woods appear darker than elsewhere ; the frequent little lakes are as inky in line as the pools of the High Alps - and the meadows of living emerald give but a partial brightness to the scenery. Here, however, the solitary traveller may adventure without fear. Robbers and robbercastles have … [Read more...] about The German Burns

THE guard-house was, in fact, nothing but a shed in the middle of a stubblefield. It had been built for a cider-press last summer; but since Captain Dorr had gone into the army, his regiment had camped over half his plantation, and the shed was boarded up, with heavy wickets at either end, to hold whatever prisoners might fall into their hands from Floyd’s forces. It was a strong point for the Federal troops, his farm, — a sort of wedge in the Rebel Cheat counties of Western Virginia. Only one prisoner was in the guard-house now. The sentry, a raw boat-hand from Illinois, gaped incessantly at him through the bars, not sure if the “ Secesh ” were limbed and headed like other men ; but the November fog was so thick that he could discern nothing but a short, squat man, in brown clothes and white hat, heavily striding to and fro. A negro was crouching outside, his knees cuddled in his arms to keep warm: a field-hand, you could be sure from the face, a grisly patch of flabby black, with a … [Read more...] about John Lamar

BROMPTON was one of the earlier New England settlements. Its cemeteries contain numerous stones dating back almost to the middle of the seventeenth century, and the town celebrated its bicentennial years ago. Its first meeting-house was burned by Indians. In the Revolutionary era its citizens hurried away to the earliest engagements around Boston ; and of that period it preserves many memorials, notably two line old taverns, in which some of the most famous of the Continental officers are known to have lodged. But we are not now concerned with its history, and I come directly to the time, a decade or so before the civil war, when the town, after having been for more than a century and a half a small farming community, for which all necessary boot and shoe making and repairing were easily done by a few cobblers, was beginning to make shoes on a larger scale, for export. Brompton has neither water - power nor any of the other natural advantages which would have made it possible to … [Read more...] about A Massachusetts Shoe Town

I. JOHN FORSTER, who lived to complete but one of the three volumes in which he had planned to write the Life of Jonathan Swift, speaks in the preface of his hero’s correspondence “ with his friend Knightley Chetwode, of Woodbrooke, during the seventeen years (1714-1731) which followed his appointment to the deanery of St. Patrick’s. Of these letters,” Forster goes on to say, “the richest addition to the correspondence of this most masterly of English letter-writers since it was first collected, more does not need to be said here ; but of the late representative of the Chetwode family I crave permission to add a word. His rare talents and taste suffered from his delicate health and fastidious temperament, but in my life I have seen few things more delightful than his pride in the connection of his race and name with the companionship of Swift. Such was the jealous care with which he preserved the letters, treasuring them as an heirloom of honour, that he would never allow them to be … [Read more...] about Some Unpublished Letters of Dean Swift

FOR nearly a hundred years “ Butterfield’s ” was as well known in the town of Slumborough as the post-office, and almost as much frequented. Before the war the firm was represented by Joseph Butterfield, a most comfortably prosperous, mild man, who had succeeded to the honors of his house as hereditary grocer there. Nominally a grocer, but if any feminine stranger had chanced to be in pressing need of, say, a hoopskirt, of the kind in vogue then, she would probably have been directed to Butterfield’s, where she would have found some of these elegant and indispensable articles of dress swinging gracefully from hooks in the doorway of the store. For “ Hang the hoops in the do’ of the sto’ ” was one of the orders of the head of the firm, given as regularly as the day came and the “ sto’ ” was opened. Had any masculine stranger wished to provide himself with a book, it was to Butterfield’s that he would have been sent by almost anybody in the town, — either there or to the chemist’s ; and … [Read more...] about Butterfield & Co.: In Two Parts. Part One