“Now that corpse,” said the undertaker, patting the folded hands of deceased approvingly, was a brick-every way you took him he was a brick. He was so real accommodating, and so modest-...

As I understand it, what you desire is information about ‘my first lie, and how I got out of it.’ I was born in 1835; I am well along, and my memory is not as good as it was. If you had...

Now, to show how really hard it is to foist a moral or a truth upon an unsuspecting public through a burlesque without entirely and absurdly missing one’s mark, I will here set down two...

On the Erie Canal, it was, All on a summer’s day, I sailed forth with my parents Far away to Albany. From out the clouds at noon that d…

The stirring part of this celebrated colored man’s life properly began with his death—that is to say, the notable features of his biography began with the first time he died. He had bee...

AT THE BANQUET, IN CHICAGO, GIVEN BY THE ARMY OF THE TENNESSEE TO THEIR FIRST COMMANDER, GENERAL U. S. GRANT, NOVEMBER, 1879 The fifteenth regular toast was “The Babies—as they comfort ...

A few months ago I was nominated for Governor of the great state of New York, to run against Mr. John T. Smith and Mr. Blank J. Blank on an independent ticket. I somehow felt that I had...

Poor, sad-eyed stranger! There was that about his humble mien, his tired look, his decayed-gentility clothes, that almost reached the mustard, seed of charity that still remained, remot...

Lakeside was a pleasant little town of five or six thousand inhabitants, and a rather pretty one, too, as towns go in the Far West. It had church accommodations for thirty-five thousand...

I was spending the month of March 1892 at Mentone, in the Riviera. At this retired spot one has all the advantages, privately, which are to be had publicly at Monte Carlo and Nice, a fe...

You have heard from a great many people who did something in the war, is it not fair and right that you listen a little moment to one who started out to do something in it but didn’t? T...

My beautiful new watch had run eighteen months without losing or gaining, and without breaking any part of its machinery or stopping. I had come to believe it infallible in its judgment...

Often a quite assified remark becomes sanctified by use and petrified by custom; it is then a permanency, its term of activity a geologic period. The day after the arrival of Prince Hen...

One of the best men in Washington—or elsewhere—is RILEY, correspondent of one of the great San Francisco dailies. Riley is full of humor, and has an unfailing vein of irony, which makes...