At about six in the morning of July 3, 1860, while I was watering my petunias, and thinking of nothing in particular, I perceived coming towards me, a tall, beardless, fair-haired young fellow, wearing a German cap and gold-rimmed spectacles.

Obeying an inalienable law, things grew, spreading riotous and strange in their instinct for growth.

To stretch his legs between consultations, Maclean escorted his last patient to Baker Street station.

"Christmas won't be Christmas without any presents," grumbled Jo, lying on the rug.

"Please, sir, is this Plumfield?" asked a ragged boy of the man who opened the great gate at which the omnibus left him.

In the twentieth year of the reign of the right high and puissant King Henry the Eighth, namely, in 1529, on the twenty-first of April, and on one of the loveliest evenings that ever fell on the loveliest district in England, a fair youth, having somewhat the appearance of a page, was leaning over the terrace-wall on the north side of Windsor Castle, and gazing at the magnificent scene before him.