A man stood upon a railroad bridge in northern Alabama, looking down into the swift water twenty feet below. The man’s hands were behind his back, the wrists bound with a cord. A rope closely encircled his neck...

Just after passing Caraher’s saloon, on the County Road that ran south from Bonneville, and that divided the Broderson ranch from that of Los Muertos, Presley was suddenly aware of the faint and prolonged blowing of a steam whistle that he knew must come from the railroad shops near the depot at Bonneville. In starting out from the ranch house that morning, he had forgotten his watch, and was now perplexed to know whether the whistle was blowing for twelve or for one o’clock...

To Laius, King of Thebes, an oracle foretold that the child bornto him by his queen Jocasta would slay his father and wed his mother.So when in time a son was born the infant’s feet were riveted togetherand he was left to die on Mount Cithaeron. But a shepherd found thebabe and tended him, and delivered him to another shepherd who tookhim to his master, the King or Corinth...

Of course travelling in Russia is no longer what it was. During the last half century a vast network of railways has been constructed, and one can now travel in a comfortable first-class carriage from Berlin to St. Petersburg or Moscow, and thence to Odessa, Sebastopol, the Lower Volga, the Caucasus, Central Asia, or Eastern Siberia...

The day broke gray and dull. The clouds hung heavily, and there was a rawness in the air that suggested snow. A woman servant came into a room in which a child was sleeping and drew the curtains...

It is a little remarkable, that--though disinclined to talk overmuch of myself and my affairs at the fireside, and to my personal friends--an autobiographical impulse should twice in my life have taken possession of me, in addressing the public...

All children, except one, grow up. They soon know that they will grow up, and the way Wendy knew was this. One day when she was two years old she was playing in a garden, and she plucked another flower and ran with it to her mother...

IRINA ABKADINA, an actress CONSTANTINE TREPLIEFF, her son PETER SORIN, her brother NINA ZARIETCHNAYA, a young girl, the daughter of a rich landowner ILIA SHAMRAEFF, the manager of SORIN’S estate PAULINA, his wife MASHA, their daughter BORIS TRIGORIN, an author EUGENE DORN, a doctor SIMON MEDVIEDENKO, a schoolmaster JACOB, a workman A COOK A MAIDSERVANT The scene is laid on SORIN’S estate. Two years elapse between the third and fourth acts...

On my right hand there were lines of fishing stakes resembling a mysterious system of half-submerged bamboo fences, incomprehensible in its division of the domain of tropical fishes, and crazy of aspect as if abandoned forever by some nomad tribe of fishermen now gone to the other end of the ocean; for there was no sign of human habitation as far as the eye could reach...

Not all American women remained at home while the men fought the Civil War. Some wives, particularly those of officers, followed their husbands to the front lines of battle and lived with them at soldiers’ camps. Some unmarried women spent time at the soldiers’ camps as well, cooking, doing laundry, and sometimes serving as prostitutes—even though the traditional values of society frowned upon this practice...