MANY miles away waves were booming on a rocky coast—Boom! Boom! Boom!—No, it was the surf hissing up a gravel beach—pebbles swishing back in the undertow—Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!—Ah, he had it now—a voice talking—a heavy bass voice talking and a lighter, quieter voice answering? That was it.By HERBERT HOPKINS MOORHOUSE42 min
"THIS day Your Majesty’s reign is over. This day Your Majesty’s reign is over—” “Why what’s the matter, Nancy?” Mr. Outerbridge called from his side of the net. “That’s the third ball you’ve missed.” Mrs. Outerbridge laughed, a queer little laugh that caught in her throat.By EUGENIA WALLACE32 min
A SOUTHERLY squall rattled the windows, and through the glass, blurred by driving rain, a supercilious young man in plus fours stared discontentedly at the oaks swaying before the gale, the little pools already forming on the eighteenth green, and the wildly fluttering red flag.By C. C. DIXON25 min
OUGHT to fire you out on your ear, Crandall,” said Seward, furiously. “What have you got to say for yourself?” T. J. Seward was a big man in his middle forties, with a bristly head of live, rough, gray hair; stormy, dark slate-colored eyes, deep set under thick brows, and heavy forceful features.By WILLIAM SLAVENS McNUTT25 min
IT COULD be said of the Hennesseys that they stuck together. Until Ellen began having beaux and going out evenings—a bit prematurely, Mike Hennessey thought— practically every night could find the family group of them assembled in the usually overheated, always overlighted, overcrowded living-room of theirs, on the fourth floor of a semi-modern pressed brick apartment house on 181st Street with a zigzag of fire-escape down its front and a flock of perambulators under the stairway in the lower imitation marble foyer.By FANNIE HURST23 min
FOR fully three weeks nothing had happened to disturb the comparative peace of the Ronald family, and then one night Peter burst into the house, his sixty h.p. engine missing on four. “What’ve you been doing to get yourself chased?” I demanded as he sank on to the chesterfield.By NORMA PHILLIPS MUIR22 min
THE rector of St. Margaret’s leaned above his vestry desk in an absorbed and scholarly position. He had fallen asleep that way and it was probably a last despairing effort of the subconscious to maintain so suitable an attitude that liberated a muscular spasm and caused the paperweight to descend upon his toe.By ISABEL ECCLESTONE MACKAY21 min
AFTER the suppression of the Red River rebellion, a young Scotchman discharged from Wolseley’s command homesteaded in 1872 about thirty miles from Winnipeg. He told me recently that he was the butt of much goodnatured ridicule from the pioneers along the Red and Assiniboine rivers near Fort Garry, who solemnly assured him that wheat would not grow farther back than five miles from the rivers.By GEORGE F. CHIPMAN18 min
I THINK I know why I was chosen to write an article on age. Once in the long past, I was presented with a sheet of questions to answer and one of them said: Year of Birth? and in that space I gaily set it down. Later commentators on the subject of why women do not tell their age, referred to this bulky volume in which my answers and many others appear and said: “In the Canadian Who’s Who, of a certain year, only two women have set down their age.”By NELLIE L. McCLUNG14 min
“FAIR, fat, and forty” no longer describes a typical middle-aged condition. Forty has long since lost its interest. It used to be the Ridge— the age at which our mothers put on their poke bonnets. It now marks the time when our grandmothers begin to bob their hair.By JOHN NELSON13 min
The story you want is part of the Maclean’s Archives. To access it, log in here or sign up for your free 30-day trial.
Experience anything and everything Maclean's has ever published — over 3,500 issues and 150,000 articles, images and advertisements — since 1905. Browse on your own, or explore our curated collections and timely recommendations.WATCH THIS VIDEO for highlights of everything the Maclean's Archives has to offer.