Books

Some time after the termination of the long war which England had waged in the cause of liberty when well-nigh all the world was up in arms against her, my father, Captain Patrick Loraine, having served for many years as a subaltern, believing that he should no longer find employment for his sword, sold out of the army, and with the proceeds of his commission in his pocket, quitting the old country, came to the United States in the hopes of making his fortune more rapidly than he could expect to do at home.

A library in a city house. A dining-room opens beyond a portière. The dinner-table is set. The library is furnished in red leather and dark wood. Books run to the ceiling. The carpet is indeterminate in tone. The heavy curtains are of a rich, dark crimson. A window is to be seen. The library is littered a little with the signs of feminine occupation. At one of the tables sits Mrs. Thorne. She is a young and beautiful woman, of stately presence and modest, high-bred manner. She is well-dressed—but not over-dressed—in a tea-gown such as a lady might wear in her own home when guests are not expected. The dress is cream-white; it falls open over a crimson skirt. The lamps are shaded with lace of red or of white. One with a white shade is on the table by which she sits. Her sewing materials are lying about, among books and magazines half-cut. She tries to sew upon a little boy’s lace collar, but throws her work down restlessly. Her face wears a troubled expression.

“At nine o’clock of a gusty winter night I stood on the lower stages of one of the G. P. O. outward mail towers. My purpose was a run to Quebec in “Postal Packet 162 or such other as may be appointed”; and the Postmaster-General himself countersigned the order. This talisman opened all doors, even those in the despatching-caisson at the foot of the tower, where they were delivering the sorted Continental mail. The bags lay packed close as herrings in the long gray under-bodies which our G. P. O. still calls “coaches.” Five such coaches were filled as I watched, and were shot up the guides to be locked on to their waiting packets three hundred feet nearer the stars.” -an excerpt

Historical work detailing experiences of early Jewish settlers in Palestine while still under Turkish rule from perspective of a well known Zionist political figure. Despite Aaronsohn’s ties to the United States, he was pushed into serving in the Turkish Army with the start of the first World War as the Ottoman Empire controlled Palestine.

The reflective voyager, on his first sight of New York, is baffled when he attempts to catalogue his sensations. All is so completely in contrast with the capitals of Europe. The gloriously bright sky, air that drinks like champagne, the resultant springiness of life and movement, that overdoes itself in excitement and premature exhaustion, and the obtrusively visible defects of this surface enthusiasm, monotonous streets, unfinished or unbegun city improvements, and the conspicuous lack of play-spaces for children—this is the rough portrait sketch New York draws of itself for the newcomer.