At nine o'clock on Tuesday morning, August 4, Kenneth Amory walked into the private office of the head of the well-known firm of Amory & Finkelstein, gutta-percha manufacturers, of Cologne. Max Finkelstein, the head of the firm, swung round on his revolving chair, moved his hand backward over his brush-like crop of brownish hair, and looked up through his spectacles at Kenneth, his stout florid countenance wearing an expression of worry.

'Tis said that as a man declines towards old age his mind dwells ever more and more on the events of his childhood. Whether that be true of all men or not, certain it is that my memory of things that happened fifty years ago is very clear and bright, and the little incidents of my boyhood are more to me, because they touch me more nearly, than such great matters as the late rebellion against His Majesty King George, whom God preserve.

The level rays of the early sun were struggling with the mist that lingered upon a broad full river, like a sluggard loth to quit his bed. As yet the contest was unequal, for the banks of the stream were covered with trees and shrubs, crowding upon one another as if in competition for elbow-room, through whose thick ravelled foliage the sunbeams could not clear a way. Here and there, however, the dense screen was parted by little alleys or open spaces carpeted with grass or moss, and through these a golden radiance shone, dispersing the mist, and throwing a glistening pathway across the...

A summer afternoon was dwindling to night over a wild solitude among the borderlands of Northern India. The sun had already left the deep spacious valley, wherein, as the light waned, the greens changed to browns, the browns deepened to black, and the broad silver band that denoted a stream flowing along the bottom was dulled to the hue of lead. On the west, the harsh and rugged features of the mountains, towering to incalculable heights, were softened by the increasing shade; while the snowy summits, flushed by the declining rays, were scarcely distinguishable from the roseate clouds. Away...

Mesopotamia, "the land between the rivers," has been brought by Time's revolution once more into the foreground of the history of the world. The plains where Abraham, Isaac and Jacob tended their flocks and herds; where the hosts of Sennacherib, Shalmaneser and Alexander contended for "world-power" in their day; where the Arabs, heirs of ancient civilisations, reared a civilisation of their own until it fell under the blight of Turkish dominion: have become once more the battle-ground of opposing armies, the representatives of conflicting spirits and ideals.