The Wayfarer's library

Originally catalogued on the Internet Archive as written in Latin, it is in fact a collection (in Cockney English) of amusing incidents, as related by the conductor of a London omnibus

Papers originally contributed to various English periodicals. Saint Guido.--Golden-brown.--Wild flowers.--Sunny Brighton.--The pine wood.--Nature on the roof.--One of the new voters.--The modern Thames.--The single-barrel gun.--The haunt of the hare.--The bathing season.--Under the acorns.--Downs.--Forest.--Beauty in the country.--Out of doors in February.--Haunts of the lapwing.--Outside London.--On the London road.--Red roofs of London.--A wet night in London.

"Windfalls" is 256 pages containing 42 short essays on a wide variety of subjects.

Covering topics ranging from literature to philosophy, history to social criticism, this is a snapshot of thought on 20th-century Europe (and the world) by one of Europe's sharpest wits and ablest pens. With chapter titles ranging from “The Miser and His Friends” to “The Red Reactionary,” from “The Separatist and Sacred Things” to “The New Theologian” and “The Romantic in the Rain,” this volume includes 39 brief sketches of individuals, each one of whom illustrates an aspect of contemporary society. Social, historical, and religious thought all figure prominently in this book, making it of great use in any study of the literary, religious, and social aspects of early 20th-century England and Europe generally. It will be of interest to students and scholars of the essay in English literature. It is a fine introduction to Chesterton's social criticism, which remains unique for its willingness to criticize some of the uncomfortable truths about capitalism without straying toward an inhuman bureaucratic socialism.

Mr. Button was seated on a sea-chest with a fiddle under his left ear. He was playing the "Shan van vaught," and accompanying the tune, punctuating it, with blows of his left heel on the fo'cs'le deck. "O the Frinch are in the bay, Says the Shan van vaught." He was dressed in dungaree trousers, a striped shirt, and a jacket baize - green in parts from the influence of sun and salt. A typical old shell-back, round-shouldered, hooked of finger; a figure with strong hints of a crab about it. His face was like a moon, seen red through tropical mists; and as he played it wore an expression of strained attention as though the fiddle were telling him tales much more marvellous than the old bald statement about Bantry Bay. "Left-handed Pat," was his fo'cs'le name; not because he was left-handed, but simply because everything he did he did wrong - or nearly so. Reefing or furling, or handling a slush tub - if a mistake was to be made, he made it. He was a Celt, and all the salt seas that had flowed between him and Connaught these forty years and more had not washed the Celtic element from his blood, nor the belief in fairies from his soul. The Celtic nature is a fast dye, and Mr. Button's nature was such that though he had been shanghaied by Larry Marr in 'Frisco, though he had got drunk in most ports of the world, though he had sailed with Yankee captains and been man-handled by Yankee mates, he still carried his fairies about with him - they, and a very large stock of original innocence.

Crockett’s ‘breakthrough’ and most famous novel, first published in 1894, this is part of a loose trilogy of smugglers and gypsies stories featuring the Herons, the Maxwells and the Faas. Stevensonesque in style, it is unique in its descriptions of Galloway’s coast and hills and still thrills a modern audience. ‘'The Raiders ' vibrates with sufficient dramatic action for a dozen ordinary novels. We are swept breathlessly on from one exciting situation to another; while throughout the story runs a vein of heedlessness and reckless daring that intensifies the boldness of the effect. Mr Crockett is himself a raider; far into the heart of the country of romance he penetrates, daring much, and proving his right and his might on its highways. He has written a story of really absorbing interest.’ Crockett’s best known novel immerses the reader in a world of gypsies, smugglers and free traders. Set in early 18th Century Galloway, the young ‘bonnet laird’ Patrick Heron is an ‘ordinary’ hero who is driven to extraordinary acts very much in the Stevensonian tradition of adventure romance. Crockett uses history and adds the alchemy of the romancer to take natural description, historical events and local folklore and weave them into spellbinding stories. ‘The Raiders’ is a fine example of his skill and just as gripping a story today as it was a century ago.