text:
Produced by David Schwan

A SON OF THE GODS

and

A HORSEMAN IN THE SKY

By Ambrose Bierce

Including an Introduction by W. C. Morrow

Western Classics No. Four

The Photogravure Frontispiece After A Painting by Will Jenkins

The Introduction

Brilliant and magnetic as are these two studies by Ambrose Bierce, and
especially significant as coming from one who was a boy soldier in the
Civil War, they merely reflect one side of his original and many-faceted
genius. Poet, critic, satirist, fun-maker, incomparable writer of fables
and masterly prose sketches, a seer of startling insight, a reasoner
mercilessly logical, with the delicate wit and keenness of an Irving or
an Addison, the dramatic quality of a Hugo,--all of these, and still in
the prime of his powers; yet so restricted has been his output and so
little exploited that only the judicious few have been impressed.

Although an American, he formed his bent years ago in London, where
he was associated with the younger Hood on Fun. There he laid the
foundation for that reputation which he today enjoys: the distinction of
being the last of the scholarly satirists. With that training he came
to San Francisco, where, in an environment equally as genial, his talent
grew and mellowed through the years. Then he was summoned to New York to
assist a newspaper fight against a great railroad, since the conclusion
of which brilliant campaign eastern journalism and magazine work have
claimed his attention.

Two volumes, "The Fiend's Delight" and "Cobwebs from an Empty Skull"
titles that would damn modern books--were collections published years
ago from his work on London Fun. Their appearance made him at once the
chief wit and humorist of England, and, combined with his satirical
work on Fun, led to his engagement by friends of the exiled Eugenie
to conduct a periodical against her enemies, who purposed to make her
refuge in England untenable by means of newspaper attacks. It is easy
to imagine the zest with which the chivalrous Bierce plunged into
preparations for the fight. But the struggle never came; it was
sufficient to learn that Bierce would be the Richmond; the attack upon
the stricken ex-empress was abandoned.

When he was urged in San Francisco, years afterward, to write more of
the inimitable things that filled those two volumes, he said that it was
only fun, a boy's work. Only fun! There has never been such delicious
fun since the beginning of literature, and there is nothing better than
fun. Yet it held his own peculiar quality, which is not that of American
fun,--quality of a brilliant intellectuality: the keenness of a rapier,
a teasing subtlety, a contempt for pharisaism and squeamishness, and
above all a fine philosophy. While he has never lost his sense of the
whimsical, the grotesque, the unusual, he--unfortunately, perhaps--came
oftener to give it the form of pure wit rather than of cajoling humor.
Few Americans know him as a humorist, because his humor is not built
on the broad, rough lines that are typically American. It belongs to an
older civilization, yet it is jollier than the English and bolder than
the French.

At all times his incomparable wit and satire has appealed rather to the
cultured, and even the emotional quality of his fiction is frequently so
profound and unusual as to be fully enjoyed only by the intellectually
untrammelled. His writing was never for those who could only read and
feel, not think.

Another factor against his wider acceptance has been the infrequency and
fragmentary character of his work, particularly his satire. No sustained
fort in that field has come from him. His satire was born largely of
a transient stimulus, and was evanescent. Even his short stories are,
generally, but blinding flashes of a moment in a life. He laughingly
ascribes the meagerness of his output to indolence; but there may be a
deeper reason, of which he is unconscious. What is more dampening than
a seeming lack of appreciation? "Tales of Soldiers and Civilians" had
a disheartening search for an established publisher, and finally was
brought out by an admiring merchant of San Francisco. It attracted so
much critical attention that its re-publication was soon undertaken by a
regular house.

Had Bierce never produced anything but these prose tales, his right to a
place high in American letters would nevertheless be secure, and of all
his work, serious or otherwise, here is his greatest claim to popular
and permanent recognition. No stories for which the Civil War has
furnished such dramatic setting surpass these masterpieces of short
fiction, either in power of description, subtlety of touch or literary
finish. It is deeply to be regretted that he has not given us more such
prose.

W. C. Morrow.

A SON OF THE GODS

A breezy day and a sunny landscape. An open country to right and left
and forward; behind, a wood. In the edge of this wood, facing the open
but not venturing into it, long lines of troops halted. The wood is
alive with them, and full of confused noises: the occasional rattle
of wheels as a battery of artillery goes into position to cover
the advance; the hum and murmur of the soldiers talking; a sound of
innumerable feet in the dry leaves that strew the interspaces among the
trees; hoarse commands of officers. Detached groups of horsemen are well
in front--not altogether exposed--many of them intently regarding the
crest of a hill a mile away in the direction of the interrupted advance.
For this powerful army, moving in battle order through a forest, has met
with a formidable obstacle--the open country. The crest of that gentle
hill a mile away has a sinister look; it says, Beware! Along it runs a
stone wall extending to left and right a great distance. Behind the
wall is a hedge; behind the hedge are seen the tops of trees in rather
straggling order. Among the trees--what? It is necessary to know.

Yesterday, and for many days and nights previously, we were fighting
somewhere; always there was cannonading, with occasional keen rattlings
of musketry, mingled with cheers, our own or the enemy's, we seldom
knew, attesting some temporary advantage. This morning at daybreak the
enemy was gone. We have moved forward across his earthworks, across
which we have so often vainly attempted to move before, through the
debris of his abandoned camps, among the graves of his fallen, into the
woods beyond.

How curiously we regarded everything! How odd it all seemed! Nothing
appeared quite familiar; the most commonplace objects--an old saddle,
a splintered wheel, a forgotten canteen everything related something of
the mysterious personality of those strange men who had been killing
us. The soldier never becomes wholly familiar with the conception of his
foes as men like himself; he cannot divest himself of the feeling
that they are another order of beings, differently conditioned, in an
environment not altogether of the earth. The smallest vestiges of
them rivet his attention and engage his interest. He thinks of them as
inaccessible; and, catching an unexpected glimpse of them, they appear
farther away, and therefore larger, than they really are--like objects
in a fog. He is somewhat in awe of them.

From the edge of the wood leading up the acclivity are the tracks of
horses and wheels--the wheels of cannon. The yellow grass is beaten down
by the feet of infantry. Clearly they have passed this way in thousands;
they have not withdrawn by the country roads. This is significant--it is
the difference between retiring and retreating.

That group of horsemen is our commander, his staff, and escort. He is
facing the distant crest, holding his field-glass against his eyes with
both hands, his elbows needlessly elevated. It is a fashion; it seems to
dignify the act; we are all addicted to it. Suddenly he lowers the
glass and says a few words to those about him. Two or three aides detach
themselves from the group and canter away into the woods, along the
lines in each direction. We did not hear his words, but we knew them:
"Tell General X. to send forward the skirmish line." Those of us who
have been out of place resume our positions; the men resting at ease
straighten themselves, and the ranks are reformed without a command.
Some of us staff officers dismount and look at our saddle-girths; those
already on the ground remount.

Galloping rapidly along in the edge of the open ground comes a young
officer on a snow-white horse. His saddle-blanket is scarlet. What a
fool! No one who has ever been in battle but remembers how naturally
every rifle turns toward the man on a white horse; no one but has
observed how a bit of red enrages the bull of battle. That such
colors are fashionable in military life must be accepted as the most
astonishing of all the phenomena of human vanity. They would seem to
have been devised to increase the death-rate.

This young officer is in full uniform, as if on parade. He is all agleam
with bullion, a blue-and-gold edition of the Poetry of War. A wave
of derisive laughter runs abreast of him all along the line. But how
handsome he is! With what careless grace he sits his horse!

He reins up within a respectful distance of the corps commander and
salutes. The old soldier nods familiarly; he evidently knows him. A
brief colloquy between them is going on; the young man seems to be
preferring some request which the elder one is indisposed to grant. Let
us ride a little nearer. Ah! too late--it is ended. The young officer
salutes again, wheels his horse, and rides straight toward the crest of
the hill. He is deadly pale.

A thin line of skirmishers, the men deployed at six paces or so apart,
now pushes from the wood into the open. The commander speaks to his
bugler, who claps his instrument to his lips. Tra-la-la! Tra-la-la! The
skirmishers halt in their tracks.

Meantime the young horseman has advanced a hundred yards. He is riding
at a walk, straight up the long <DW72>, with never a turn of the head.
How glorious! Gods! what would we not give to be in his place--with his
soul! He does not draw his sabre; his right hand hangs easily at his
side. The breeze catches the plume in his hat and flutters it smartly.
The sunshine rests upon his shoulder-straps, lovingly, like a visible
benediction. Straight on he rides. Ten thousand pairs of eyes are fixed
upon him with an intensity that he can hardly fail to feel; ten thousand
hearts keep quick time to the inaudible hoof-beats of his snowy steed.
He is not alone--he draws all souls after him; we are but "dead men
all." But we remember that we laughed! On and on, straight for the
hedge-lined wall, he rides. Not a look backward. Oh, if he would but
turn--if he could but see the love, the adoration, the atonement!

Not a word is spoken; the populous depths of the forest still murmur
with their unseen and unseeing swarm, but all along the fringe there
is silence absolute. The burly commander is an equestrian statue
of himself. The mounted staff officers, their field-glasses up, are
motionless all. The line of battle in the edge of the wood stands at a
new kind of "attention," each man in the attitude in which he was
caught by the consciousness of what is going on. All these hardened and
impenitent man-killers, to whom death in its awfulest forms is a fact
familiar to their every-day observation; who sleep on hills trembling
with the thunder of great guns, dine in the midst of streaming missiles,
and play at cards among the dead faces of their dearest friends,--all
are watching with suspended breath and beating hearts the outcome of an
act involving the life of one man. Such is the magnetism of courage and
devotion.

If now you should turn your head you would see a simultaneous movement
among the spectators a start, as if they had received an electric
shock--and looking forward again to the now distant horseman you would
see that he has in that instant altered his direction and is riding
at an angle to his former course. The spectators suppose the sudden
deflection to be caused by a shot, perhaps a wound; but take this
field-glass and you will observe that he is riding toward a break in the
wall and hedge. He means, if not killed, to ride through and overlook
the country beyond.

You are not to forget the nature of this man's act; it is not permitted
to you to think of it as an instance of bravado, nor, on the other hand,
a needless sacrifice of self. If the enemy has not retreated, he is in
force on that ridge. The investigator will encounter nothing less than
a line of battle; there is no need of pickets, videttes, skirmishers,
to give warning of our approach; our attacking lines will be visible,
conspicuous, exposed to an artillery fire that will shave the ground the
moment they break from cover, and for half the distance to a sheet
of rifle bullets in which nothing can live. In short, if the enemy is
there, it would be madness to attack him in front; he must be maneuvered
out by the immemorial plan of threatening his line of communication, as
necessary to his existence as to the diver at the bottom of the sea his
air-tube. But how ascertain if the enemy is there? There is but one way:
somebody must go and see. The natural and customary thing to do is to
send forward a line of skirmishers. But in this case they will answer
in the affirmative with all their lives; the enemy, crouching in double
ranks behind the stone wall and in cover of the hedge, will wait until
it is possible to count each assailant's teeth. At the first volley a
half of the questioning line will fall, the other half before it can
accomplish the predestined retreat. What a price to pay for gratified
curiosity! At what a dear rate an army must sometimes purchase
knowledge! "Let me pay all," says this gallant man--this military
Christ!

There is no hope except the hope against hope that the crest is clear.
True, he might prefer capture to death. So long as he advances, the line
will not fire,--why should it? He can safely ride into the hostile ranks
and become a prisoner of war. But this would defeat his object. It would
not answer our question; it is necessary either that he return unharmed
or be shot to death before our eyes. Only so shall we know how to act.
If captured--why, that might have been done by a half-dozen stragglers.

Now begins an extraordinary contest of intellect between a man and
an army. Our horseman, now within a quarter of a mile of the crest,
suddenly wheels to the left and gallops in a direction parallel to
it. He has caught sight of his antagonist; he knows all. Some slight
advantage of ground has enabled him to overlook a part of the line. If
he were here, he could tell us in words. But that is now hopeless; he
must make the best use of the few minutes of life remaining to him,
by compelling the enemy himself to tell us as much and as plainly as
possible--which, naturally, that discreet power is reluctant to do. Not
a rifleman in those crouching ranks, not a cannoneer at those masked and
shotted guns, but knows the needs of the situation, the imperative duty
of forbearance. Besides, there has been time enough to forbid them
all to fire. True, a single rifle-shot might drop him and be no great
disclosure. But firing is infectious--and see how rapidly he moves,
with never a pause except as he whirls his horse about to take a new
direction, never directly backward toward us, never directly forward
toward his executioners. All this is visible through the glass; it seems
occurring within pistol-shot; we see all but the enemy, whose presence,
whose thoughts, whose motives we infer. To the unaided eye there is
nothing but a black figure on a white horse, tracing slow zigzags
against the <DW72> of a distant hill--so slowly they seem almost to
creep.

Now--the glass again--he has tired of his failure, or sees his error, or
has gone mad; he is dashing directly forward at the wall, as if to take
it at a leap, hedge and all! One moment only and he wheels right about
and is speeding like the wind straight down the <DW72>--toward his
friends, toward his death! Instantly the wall is topped with a fierce
roll of smoke for a distance of hundreds of yards to, right and left.
This is as instantly dissipated by the wind, and before the rattle of
the rifles reaches us, he is down. No, he recovers his seat; he has but
pulled his horse upon its haunches. They are up and away! A tremendous
cheer bursts from our ranks, relieving the insupportable tension of our
feelings. And the horse and its rider? Yes, they are up and away.
Away, indeed--they are making directly to our left, parallel to the
now steadily blazing and smoking wall. The rattle of the musketry is
continuous, and every bullet's target is that courageous heart.

Suddenly a great bank of white smoke pushes upward from behind the
wall. Another and another--a dozen roll up before the thunder of the
explosions and the humming of the missiles reach our ears, and the
missiles themselves come bounding through clouds of dust into our
covert, knocking over here and there a man and causing a temporary
distraction, a passing thought of self.

The dust drifts away. Incredible!--that enchanted horse and rider
have passed a ravine and are climbing another <DW72> to unveil another
conspiracy of silence, to thwart the will of another armed host. Another
moment and that crest too is in eruption. The horse rears and strikes
the air with its forefeet. They are down at last. But look again--the
man has detached himself from the dead animal. He stands erect,
motionless, holding his sabre in his right hand straight above his head.
His face is toward us. Now he lowers his hand to a level with his face
and moves it outward, the blade of the sabre describing a downward
curve. It is a sign to us, to the world, to posterity. It is a hero's
salute to death and history.

Again the spell is broken; our men attempt to cheer; they are choking
with emotion; they utter hoarse, discordant cries; they clutch their
weapons and press tumultuously forward into the open. The skirmishers,
without orders, against orders, are going forward at a keen run, like
hounds unleashed. Our cannon speak and the enemy's now open in full
chorus; to right and left as far as we can see, the distant crest,
seeming now so near, erects its towers of cloud, and the great shot
pitch roaring down among our moving masses. Flag after flag of ours
emerges from the wood, line after line sweeps forth, catching the
sunlight on its burnished arms. The rear battalions alone are in
obedience; they preserve their proper distance from the insurgent front.

The commander has not moved. He now removes his field-glass from his
eyes and glances to the right and left. He sees the human current
flowing on either side of him and his huddled escort, like tide waves
parted by a rock. Not a sign of feeling in his face; he is thinking.
Again he directs his eyes forward; they slowly traverse that malign
and awful crest. He addresses a calm word to his bugler. Tra-la-la!
Tra-la-la! The injunction has an imperiousness which enforces it. It is
repeated by all the bugles of all the subordinate commanders; the sharp
metallic notes assert themselves above the hum of the advance, and
penetrate the sound of the cannon. To halt is to withdraw. The colors
move slowly back, the lines face about and sullenly follow, bearing
their wounded; the skirmishers return, gathering up the dead.

Ah, those many, many needless dead! That great soul whose beautiful body
is lying over yonder, so conspicuous against the sere hillside--could it
not have been spared the bitter consciousness of a vain devotion?
Would one exception have marred too much the pitiless perfection of the
divine, eternal plan?

A HORSEMAN IN THE SKY

One sunny afternoon in the autumn of the year 1861, a soldier lay in
a clump of laurel by the side of a road in Western Virginia. He lay at
full length, upon his stomach, his feet resting upon the toes, his
head upon the left forearm. His extended right hand loosely grasped his
rifle. But for the somewhat methodical disposition of his limbs and a
slight rhythmic movement of the cartridge-box at the back of his belt,
he might have been thought to be dead. He was asleep at his post of
duty. But if detected he would be dead shortly afterward, that being the
just and legal penalty of his crime.

The clump of laurel in which the criminal lay was in the angle of a road
which, after, ascending, southward, a steep acclivity to that point,
turned sharply to the west, running along the summit for perhaps one
hundred yards. There it turned southward again and went zigzagging
downward through the forest. At the salient of that second angle was a
large flat rock, jutting out northward, overlooking the deep valley from
which the road ascended. The rock capped a high cliff; a stone dropped
from its outer edge would have fallen sheer downward one thousand feet
to the tops of the pines. The angle where the soldier lay was on another
spur of the same cliff. Had he been awake, he would have commanded a
view, not only of the short arm of the road and the jutting rock, but
of the entire profile of the cliff below it. It might well have made him
giddy to look.

The country was wooded everywhere except at the bottom of the valley
to the northward, where there was a small natural meadow, through which
flowed a stream scarcely visible from the valley's rim. This open ground
looked hardly larger than an ordinary dooryard, but was really several
acres in extent. Its green was more vivid than that of the inclosing
forest. Away beyond it rose a line of giant cliffs similar to those upon
which we are supposed to stand in our survey of the savage scene, and
through which the road had some how made its climb to the summit. The
configuration of the valley, indeed, was such that from this point
of observation it seemed entirely shut in, and one could not but have
wondered how the road which found a way out of it had found a way into
it, and whence came and whither went the waters of the stream that
parted the meadow two thousand feet below.

No country is so wild and difficult but men will make it a theater of
war; concealed in the forest at the bottom of that military rat-trap, in
which half a hundred men in possession of the exits might have starved
an army to submission, lay five regiments of Federal infantry. They had
marched all the previous day and night, and were resting. At nightfall
they would take to the road again, climb to the place where their
unfaithful sentinel now slept, and, descending the other <DW72> of the
ridge, fall upon a camp of the enemy at about midnight. Their hope was
to surprise it, for the road led to the rear of it. In case of failure,
their position would be perilous in the extreme; and fail they surely
would, should accident or vigilance apprise the enemy of the movement.

The sleeping sentinel in the clump of laurel was a young Virginian named
Carter Druse. He was the son of wealthy parents, an only child, and had
known such ease and cultivation and high living as wealth and taste were
able to command in the mountain country of Western Virginia. His home
was but a few miles from where he now lay. One morning he had risen
from the breakfast table and said, quietly but gravely: "Father, a Union
regiment has arrived at Grafton. I am going to join it."

The father lifted his leonine head, looked at the son a moment in
silence, and replied: "Well, go, sir, and, whatever may occur, do what
you conceive to be your duty. Virginia, to which you are a traitor, must
get on without you. Should we both live to the end of the war, we will
speak further of the matter. Your mother, as the physician has informed
you, is in a most critical condition; at the best, she cannot be with us
longer than a few weeks, but that time is precious. It would be better
not to disturb her."

So Carter Druse, bowing reverently to his father, who returned the
salute with a stately courtesy which masked a breaking heart, left the
home of his childhood to go soldiering. By conscience and courage, by
deeds of devotion and daring, he soon commended himself to his fellows
and his officers; and it was to these qualities and to some knowledge of
the country that he owed his selection for his present perilous duty
at the extreme outpost. Nevertheless, fatigue had been stronger than
resolution, and he had fallen asleep. What good or bad angel came in
a dream to rouse him from his state of crime, who shall say? Without a
movement, without a sound, in the profound silence and the languor
of the late afternoon, some invisible messenger of fate touched with
unsealing finger the eyes of his consciousness--whispered into the ear
of his spirit the mysterious awakening word which no human lips ever
have spoken, no human memory ever has recalled. He quietly raised
his forehead from his arm and looked between the masking stems of the
laurels, instinctively closing his right hand about the stock of his
rifle.

His first feeling was a keen artistic delight. On a colossal pedestal,
the cliff,--motionless at the extreme edge of the capping rock
and sharply outlined against the sky,--was an equestrian statue of
impressive dignity. The figure of the man sat the figure of the horse,
straight and soldierly, but with the repose of a Grecian god carved in
the marble which limits the suggestion of activity. The gray costume
harmonized with its aerial background; the metal of accoutrement and
caparison was softened and subdued by the shadow; the animal's skin had
no points of high light. A carbine, strikingly foreshortened, lay across
the pommel of the saddle, kept in place by the right hand grasping it
at the "grip"; the left hand, holding the bridle rein, was invisible.
In silhouette against the sky, the profile of the horse was cut with
the sharpness of a cameo; it looked across the heights of air to the
confronting cliffs beyond. The face of the rider, turned slightly away,
showed only an outline of temple and beard; he was looking downward to
the bottom of the valley. Magnified by its lift against the sky and by
the soldier's testifying sense of the formidableness of a near enemy,
the group appeared of heroic, almost colossal, size.

For an instant Druse had a strange, half-defined feeling that he had
slept to the end of the war and was looking upon a noble work of art
reared upon that commanding eminence to commemorate the deeds of an
heroic past of which he had been an inglorious part. The feeling was
dispelled by a slight movement of the group: the horse, without moving
its feet, had drawn its body slightly backward from the verge; the
man remained immobile as before. Broad awake and keenly alive to the
significance of the situation, Druse now brought the butt of his rifle
against his cheek by cautiously pushing the barrel forward through the
bushes, cocked the piece, and, glancing through the sights, covered a
vital spot of the horseman's breast. A touch upon the trigger and all
would have been well with Carter Druse. At that instant the horseman
turned his head and looked in the direction of his concealed
foeman--seemed to look into his very face, into his eyes, into his
brave, compassionate heart.

Is it, then, so terrible to kill an enemy in war--an enemy who has
surprised a secret vital to the safety of one's self and comrades--an
enemy more formidable for his knowledge than all his army for its
numbers? Carter Druse grew pale; he shook in every limb, turned faint,
and saw the statuesque group before him as black figures, rising,
falling, moving unsteadily in arcs of circles in a fiery sky. His hand
fell away from his weapon, his head slowly dropped until his face rested
on the leaves in which he lay. This courageous gentleman and hardy
soldier was near swooning from intensity of emotion.

It was not for long; in another moment his face was raised from earth,
his hands resumed their places on the rifle, his forefinger sought the
trigger; mind, heart and eyes were clear, conscience and reason sound.
He could not hope to capture that enemy; to alarm him would but send
him dashing to his camp with his fatal news. The duty of the soldier was
plain: the man must be shot dead from ambush--without warning, without
a moment's spiritual preparation, with never so much as an unspoken
prayer, he must be sent to his account. But no--there is a hope; he may
have discovered nothing; perhaps he is but admiring the sublimity of
the landscape. If permitted, he may turn and ride carelessly away in
the direction whence he came. Surely it will be possible to judge at
the instant of his withdrawing whether he knows. It may well be that his
fixity of attention---Druse turned his head and looked through the deeps
of air downward as from the surface of the bottom of a translucent sea.
He saw creeping across the green meadow a sinuous line of figures of men
and horses--some foolish commander was permitting the soldiers of his
escort to water their beasts in the open, in plain view from a hundred
summits!

Druse withdrew his eyes from the valley and fixed them again upon the
group of man and horse in the sky, and again it was through the sights
of his rifle. But this time his aim was at the horse. In his memory,
as if they were a divine mandate, rang the words of his father at their
parting: "Whatever may occur, do what you conceive to be your duty." He
was calm now. His teeth were firmly but not rigidly closed; his nerves
were as tranquil as a sleeping babe's--not a tremor affected any muscle
of his body; his breathing, until suspended in the act of taking aim,
was regular and slow. Duty had conquered; the spirit had said to the
body: "Peace, be still." He fired.

An officer of the Federal force, who, in a spirit of adventure or in
quest of knowledge, had left the hidden bivouac in the valley, and, with
aimless feet, had made his way to the lower edge of a small open space
near the foot of the cliff, was considering what he had to gain by
pushing his exploration further. At a distance of a quarter-mile before
him, but apparently at a stone's throw, rose from its fringe of pines
the gigantic face of rock, towering to so great a height above him that
it made him giddy to look up to where its edge cut a sharp, rugged
line against the sky. At some distance away to his right it presented a
clean, vertical profile against a background of blue sky to a point half
the way down, and of distant hills hardly less blue, thence to the tops
of the trees at its base. Lifting his eyes to the dizzy altitude of its
summit, the officer saw an astonishing sight--a man on horseback riding
down into the valley through the air!

Straight upright sat the rider, in military fashion, with a firm seat in
the saddle, a strong clutch upon the rein to hold his charger from too
impetuous a plunge. From his bare head his long hair streamed upward,
waving like a plume. His hands were concealed in the cloud of the
horse's lifted mane. The animal's body was as level as if every
hoof-stroke encountered the resistant earth. Its motions were those of
a wild gallop, but even as the officer looked they ceased, with all the
legs thrown sharply forward as in the act of alighting from a leap. But
this was a flight!

Filled with amazement and terror by this apparition of a horseman in the
sky-half believing himself the chosen scribe of some new apocalypse, the
officer was overcome by the intensity of his emotions; his legs failed
him and he fell. Almost at the same instant he heard a crashing sound in
the trees--a sound that died without an echo--and all was still.

The officer rose to his feet, trembling. The familiar sensation of an
abraded shin recalled his dazed faculties. Pulling himself together,
he ran obliquely away from the cliff to a point distant from its foot;
thereabout he expected to find his man; and thereabout he naturally
failed. In the fleeting instant of his vision his imagination had been
so wrought upon by the apparent grace and ease and intention of the
marvelous performance that it did not occur to him that the line of
march of aerial cavalry is directly downward, and that he could find the
objects of his search at the very foot of the cliff. A half-hour later
he returned to camp.

This officer was a wise man; he knew better than to tell an incredible
truth. He said nothing of what he had seen. But when the commander
asked him if in his scout he had learned anything of advantage to the
expedition, he answered:

"Yes, sir; there is no road leading down into this valley from the
southward."

The commander, knowing better, smiled.

After firing his shot, Private Carter Druse reloaded his rifle and
resumed his watch. Ten minutes had hardly passed when a Federal sergeant
crept cautiously to him on hands and knees. Druse neither turned his
head nor looked at him, but lay without motion or sign of recognition.

"Did you fire?" the sergeant whispered.

"At what?"

"A horse. It was standing on yonder rock-pretty far out. You see it is
no longer there. It went over the cliff."

The man's face was white, but he showed no other sign of emotion. Having
answered, he turned away his eyes and said no more. The sergeant did not
understand.

"See here, Druse," he said, after a moment's silence, "it's no use
making a mystery. I order you to report. Was there anybody on the
horse?"

"Yes."

"Well?"

"My father."

The sergeant rose to his feet and walked away. "Good God!" he said.

Here ends No. Four of the Western Classics containing A Son of the Gods
and A Horseman in the Sky by Ambrose Bierce with an introduction by
W. C. Morrow and a photogravure frontispiece after a painting by Will
Jenkins. Of this first edition one thousand copies have been issued
printed on Frabriano handmade paper the typography designed by J. H.
Nash published by Paul Elder and Company and done into a book for them
at the Tomoye Press in the city of New York MCMVII

End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of A Son of the Gods, and A Horseman in
the Sky, by Ambrose Bierce

***

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaBook


text:
Born in DeForest, Wisconsin, Anders earned a bachelor's in fine arts from the University of Wisconsin Stevens Point and a master's from Rutgers University, Mason Gross School of the Arts. After grad school, Anders moved to New York and made her debut on Broadway in "Proof" as an understudy, and appeared in "The Graduate" playing Elaine Robinson. Anders' first TV-land stop was daytime dramas, with appearances on "One Life to Live" as a nanny (ABC, 1998) and then as an office assistant on "Guiding Light" (CBS, 2001). Her next break was a spot on "Law & Order" (NBC, 2001). She then received wide notice for her recurring role on "Oz" (HBO, 2003). Anders also made an appearance on a 2004 episode of the supernaturally inspired "Tru Calling" and in a small role in the failed remake "The Stepford Wives" (2004) before becoming the adorable girl next door on "J y"-Anders joined the cast after the initial pilot episode was shot, when the producers re-thought and re-cast the role of Alex to make her more neurotic and endearing.
MODERN FAMILY · S6, E5
Won't You Be Our Neighbor
Phil is selling the house next door and he and Claire are excited by the prospect of having wonderful new neighbors, but that quickly turns into panic when a loud and obnoxious couple come to look at the house. Jay forbids Manny to see his new girlfriend when he realizes she's the granddaughter of his biggest business rival, leading to a clash of the closet titans. Elsewhere, Mitch and Cam are determined to switch Lily out of Mrs. Plank's class since she is known to rule with an iron fist – not to mention she scares them too.
Halloween 3: Awesomeland
Even though Halloween is Claire's holiday, she allows Phil to take over this year so instead of her usual fright-fest theme, he decides to turn the house into AwesomeLand! Gloria picks out Princess Fiona and Shrek costumes for her and Jay but Jay decides he wants to be Prince Charming complete with a full head of gorgeous hair, and with the hair comes a new sense of confidence. Elsewhere, Cameron gets overwhelmed by the day's activities and Mitchell has closing arguments for a huge case, and it doesn't help that the stenographer is dressed like a spider.
MODERN FAMILY · S6, E12
The Big Guns
Claire is furious about neighbors Ronnie and Amber's eye-sore of a boat on their front lawn and it soon becomes an all-out war when Phil calls in the "big guns" as back up -- his dad Frank and all his retired friends to give them a taste of their own medicine. Elsewhere, Jay is trying to potty train Joe but Gloria does not think he's ready yet, and Cam secretly takes Lily to clown school behind Mitchell's back.
Knock 'em Down
Jay agrees to sub in on Cam's bowling team for the finals but Cam was not fully upfront about it being an all gay league, which puts Jay in a precarious position. Phil and Claire have a surprisingly good time with unlikely dinner companions, their neighbors Ronnie and Amber, and Gloria and Mitch agree to go clubbing with Haley to prove they're still young and fun but they didn't anticipate the pre-party portion of the night.
YOUNG SHELDON · S2, E2
A Rival Prodigy and Sir Isaac Neutron
When Dr. Sturgis (recurring guest star WALLACE SHAWN) bonds with Paige (guest star MCKENNA GRACE), another ten-year-old genius, Sheldon's jealousy leads Meemaw to intervene. Meanwhile, Mary invites Paige's family over for a play date.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
package org.jdna.url;

import java.util.Map;

public interface ICookieHandler {
    void handleSetCookie(String var1, String var2);

    Map<String, String> getCookiesToSend(String var1);
}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


Sydney artist Matthys Gerber is a deft painter who deliberately makes work in an array of contrasting styles.
From photorealism to fluid abstraction, portraits and still lives, Gerber's interests remain wide-ranging and his approach incessantly experimental. The motif of the Rorschach reappears in his paintings.
In varying colours, sizes and styles that morph into different physical forms, from the canvas to the wall, the Rorschach epitomises the intentions of Gerber's work to reflect the nature of desire and the will to find figurative elements in abstract forms. This will be the most comprehensive exhibition of Gerber's work ever staged in Australia.


Today the team at WPMU DEV released the beta of what we believe to be the ultimate Facebook plugin!
You could combine a dozen existing plugins to get to a similar result, but with this one sleek and compact plugin, you can be assured of future upgrades and improvements as new features hit Facebook for years to come.
You can get the plugin now from WPMU DEV!
Try it out and let us know in the comments what you think!


Another EMS Box at Durable Packaging International was requested at about 2:05 p.m. Wednesday. On today's EMS Box at 750 Northgate Parkway, Wheeling firefighter/paramedics were again assisted by firefighter/paramedics from Arlington Heights, Barrington, Buffalo Grove, Des Plaines, Highland Park, Lincolnshire-Riverwoods, Long Grove, Northbrook, and Palatine.
Yesterday Wheeling police and firefighter/paramedics responded about 12:21 p.m. Tuesday to a report of trouble breathing for a female in her 20's at a manufacturing plant at 750 Northgate Parkway. Paramedics soon discovered that more workers were becoming ill from high carbon monoxide levels, and at least one person was reported passed out about 1:31 p.m. Firefighters tested the air quality in the warehouse building and discovered carbon monoxide levels of 200 parts per million. The building was immediately evacuated and firefighters called for an extra alarm EMS Box at about 12:56 p.m. Tuesday as additional employees became ill. About thirteen workers were transported to four area hospitals.


The mayor said Phoenix was able to get its last chronically-homeless veteran off the streets, but he told MSNBC there is still work to do to break the cycle of homelessness.
"And, that may be health care, that may be mental, mental health training and or treatment, maybe it's substance abuse treatment, whatever is ailing that person that's causing the homelessness, we need to make sure that in addition to permanent supportive housing they have the support services," Stanton said.
Stanton said Phoenix was able to end homelessness among veterans by making it a top priority, getting the business community involved and by getting non-profit housing agencies to put veterans at the top of their lists, when housing opportunities became available.


text:
O'Connor and Guy among entries for National Winter Championships
Siobhan-Marie O'Connor and James Guy are among a host of international stars entered for next month's Swim England National Winter Championships 2017 in Sheffield.
The event will take place at Ponds Forge from 13 – 17 December and is the final chance for swimmers to stake a claim for a place on the English team for the Gold Coast 2018 Commonwealth Games.
Entries and Tickets
Download the latest Draft Programme to view athletes set to compete in each event.
If you want to watch some of the world's best swimmers in action, head to our Tickets Page to book your seat at Ponds Forge. Tickets start from just £4.00.
While Guy has already been selected for the Commonwealths, he will be hoping to rubber stamp his selection for the 200m Fly, for which he is fastest qualifier in Sheffield on 1:55.91.
Olympic 200m IM silver medallist O'Connor was also one of the 15 athletes announced in the first phase of selection for the Games.
However, the University of Bath swimmer could have half an eye on relay selection for the Gold Coast, having entered the 200m Free and 100m Fly in Sheffield.
O'Connor is also down to compete in the 100m Breast, taking on the likes of Canada's World finalist Kierra Smith and British 50m Breast record holder Imogen Clark.
Three top entries in women's 400m IM
The women's 400m Individual Medley could be one of the most exciting races of the week, with three English athletes – Aimee Willmott, Abbie Wood and Rusie Rudin – all entered on sub-4:40.
While Scotland's Hannah Miley – winner of the 400m IM at the past two Commonwealth Games – will maintain a watching brief in the long medley, she is entered in 10 other events in Sheffield.
Olympic medallist Chris Walker-Hebborn is fastest entry for both the 50m and 100m Backstroke, while Rio 2016 Olympic 200m Breaststroke finalists Andrew Willis and Molly Renshaw are among the other top senior entries.
World Junior bronze medallist Annabel Guye-Johnson is one of the eye-catching junior entries for the event, while 2017 European Junior gold medallists Tom Dean and Layla Black are also set to line up in Sheffield.
Swim England National Winter Championships 2017


Perfect, unconditional love. Probably everybody's dream, but not humanly possible. Some people accomplish accepting and loving people better than others do, with little judgment or criticism, but it's human nature to place some conditions on each other. Then our feelings usually interfere with overlooking the faults or shortcomings, so we're unable to truly love perfectly and unconditionally. But it's still helpful to spend time with those who are more positive and prone to accepting as we are, than with those who are negative and critical.
Here's your Valentine's Day inspiration… and Happy Valentine's Day to you!
if they think they deserve it.
and yet desperately need it.
His great love upon you.
then you can believe you are worth loving!
in a new way that will be life changing.
No matter how much my husband loves me, and he does so as close as to unconditionally as he can, I know God is the only One with perfect, unconditional love.
Do you enjoy a close to unconditional relationship with anyone in your life?
Do you make an effort to accept and love people unconditionally?
So sweet! No ones perfect but I know my husband loves me as unconditionally as humanly possible! He's such a sweet man!
Betsy @ Happily Ever After, Etc. recently posted..DIY Rolling Cart Transformation: a Little Paint and Organization!
Amen! What an inspiring message! I read somewhere that focusing on ourselves will never reveal our life's purpose. We were made by God and for God and until we understand that, life will never make sense. God made us so that he can love us.
If you have a diverse group of friends then you're doing something right!
Unconditional love is a difficult thing to accomplish, except when it comes to your children!
We can come as close in this world as is humanly possible, but perfect? Meh. Probably not. But that's ok. We don't have to be perfect to be worthy of love, IMO.


text:
Consular Staff
Consulate Hours
Consulate Location
Visiting Nigeria
Studying in Nigeria
Tourist/Transit Visas
History of Nigeria
Incorporating a Business Enterprise
Invest in Nigeria
Guidelines on Privatisation & Commercialisation
NIGERIANS IN US
Organization or Business Registration
Illegal stays
Exit/Entry formalities in the U.S.
Visiting the U.S. with a valid visa
Worldwide Consulate/Embassy Locations
Consulate General of Nigeria, NY
Embassy of Nigeria, Washington D.C
Permanent Mission of Nigeria. NY
FOREIGN POLICY & STATE
Other Government Links
The Federal Republic of Nigeria Diaspora Bond
U.S.$300 million Diaspora Bond
Pricing expected following the completion of the roadshow commencing June 13, 2017, subject to market conditions
A registration statement relating to these securities has been filed with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission but has not yet become effective. These Securities may not be sold nor may offers to buy be accepted prior to the time the registration statement becomes effective.
An application will also be made to the Financial Conduct Authority in its capacity as competent authority (the UK Listing Authority) for the bonds to be admitted to the official list of the UK Listing Authority and to the London Stock Exchange plc (the London Stock Exchange) for the bonds to be admitted to trading on the London Stock Exchange's regulated market.
Joint Lead Managers
BofA Merrill Lynch The Standard Bank of South Africa Limited First Bank of Nigeria Limited United Bank for Africa Plc
This notice has been prepared and is being communicated by the Federal Republic of Nigeria in relation to the proposed issue of U.S.$300 million Diaspora Bonds(the Bonds) by the Federal Republic of Nigeria. Bonds will be issued to investors in accordance with the arrangements in place between an investor and its stockbroker, private bank, wealth manager or other financial intermediary, including as to the appropriateness, and/or suitability of an investment in the Bonds by an investor, the application process, allocations, payment and delivery arrangements. Applications to purchase Bonds cannot be made directly to the Issuer.
This Notice does not constitute an offer or solicitation of an offer to buy or sell securities in any jurisdiction. This notice is an advertisement and not a prospectus for the purposes of EU Directive 2003/71/EC, as amended (the Directive) or Part VI of the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000. A prospectus (the Prospectus) relating to the Bonds will be prepared and made available to the public in the EU in accordance with the Directive. Investors should not purchase any bonds except on the basis of information contained in the registration statement relating to the securities and the Prospectus.
The tax treatment of an investor will depend on his/her individual circumstances and taxation law and practice in applicable jurisdiction at the relevant time (and may be subject to change in future). None of the Federal Republic of Nigeria or the Joint Lead Managers will provide any legal, tax, accounting or investment advice in relation to the Bonds and they are not responsible for any advice an investor may receive from any third party.
Additional risks and other important information are set out in the registration statement relating to the securities and the Prospectus. Investors should determine whether the investment is appropriate on the basis of all the information.
We often post additional information to keep you abreast of current global affairs, changes in policies, procedures and governmental guidelines.
Consular Services/
Tel: + (770) 394 6261
Fax: + (770) 394 4671
Passport Section
Ext. 2
Consulate Section
Get to know about the Consulates's activities in the community, such as upcoming passport interventions, and events. Don't forget to join our interactive platform on Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube, and like our page.
Consulate General of Nigeria
Mission's Switchboard
Email: info@nigeria-consulate-atl.org
DEVELOPED AND MAINTAINED BY NANSIGNS.COM
This to inform that the federal Government has concluded all necessary arrangements for the issuance of the Nigerian Diaspora Bond In the International Capital Market. For more details Click Here
The General Public is hereby notified that LYNXSYS: An IT Firm/Consultant with a web site domain name NIGERIANPASSPORTNOW.COM who purportedly acts and renders Consular, Visa, Payment Confirmation and Express Delivery services on behalf of the Consultant is a Hoax and should be avoided.
The Consulate wishes to categorically state, that it has nothing to do with the aforementioned business concern as it cannot guarantee its Authenticity. In this light, therefore whoever conducts business with it does as his own risk.
OPENING OF A NIGERIA VISA SORTING AND CLEARANCE CENTER OPERATED BY OIS SERVICES ON BEHALF OF THE CONSULATE OF THE FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF NIGERIA. This is to inform the General Public that a visa collection and sorting center has been opened and is operated by OIS Services on behalf of the Consulate General of Nigeria.
The office is located at: OIS SERVICES Suite 204, 918 Holcomb Bridge Road, Roswell, GA 30076 Tel. No.: +1 678 514 3263 Website:www.oisservices.com
By this development, all submissions of visa applications and payments will henceforth be handled by aforementioned office, starting from Monday, May 16, 2016. Please note that, from the above stated date (May 16, 2016) the Consulate will cease to collect any visa applications and payments.


How Brain Works. Minicolumn Hypothesis. Consciousness. Neurotransmitters and Drugs. Human Evolution. Transhumanism and Other Materials.
Как работи мозъкът. Хипотезата за миниколоните в неокортекса като градивен елемент на разума. Съзнание. Еволюция на човека. Трансхуманизъм. Класическо кондициониране и други интересни материали.
Some cited from Boris Kazachenko's knols, pointed by himself or commenters, some suggested by me, browsing around.
The brain from top to bottom - comprehensive, well-structured and well explained in short linked articles - check it out!
About 35 years ago in Scientific American, I wrote about dramatic new studies of the brain.


text:
Home NEWS Islamic cleric, Nurse arrested for missing placenta
Islamic cleric, Nurse arrested for missing placenta
A nursing attendant, Fatima Suleiman, who allegedly sold a new born baby's placenta for N20,000 to an Islamic cleric, Salaudeen Ibrahim, on Thursday said she had not been paid for the transaction before she was arrested.
In an interview with journalists in Ilorin, the Kwara State capital, the nursing attendant, who worked at Capstone Hospital, Taiwo Road, Ilorin, said the cleric asked her to get the placenta for him.
Suleiman and Ibrahim were paraded alongside other suspects by the Kwara State Commissioner of Police, Mr Bolaji Fafowora.
The nursing attendant said that she was a friend to Ibrahim's wife and that the cleric asked her to get the placenta about two months ago.
"The cleric asked me to get it (placenta). I succeeded in getting one just last week. It's my first time of engaging in it. He has not given me any money yet, neither did he promise me a certain amount of money. He didn't tell me what he wanted to use it for," she stated.
On his part, Ibrahim confessed that he wanted to use the placenta for a money ritual, adding that he inherited the ritual practise from unnamed persons.
He alleged that Suleiman had approached him for a charm to enable her curry people's favour in her dealings with them.
The cleric said, "She (Ibrahim) told me that she heard that people were using placenta to make charms to curry people's favour. I said it was true. That was the last I heard from her until she brought the placenta.
"After she handed over the placenta to me, my conscience rejected it though I inherited the charm-making practise, and I said I won't do it. When I didn't do it for myself, why for someone else?"
The police commissioner said the nursing attendant and the cleric were arrested for conspiracy to commit the offence of buying and selling/trafficking in human parts, and for being in possession of human parts.
Fafowora said a miniature coffin, charms, an exercise book and photocopied sheet of paper for charms were recovered from the suspects.
He explained that on October 31, 2018 at about 2pm, one Bashirat Jimoh, a pregnant woman and wife of Abdulfatai Jimoh of Gaa Akanbi area of Ilorin, was due to be delivered of a baby, but developed complications and was referred to Capstone Hospital on Taiwo Road, Ilorin, for a caesarean section by the General Hospital.
The CP stated, "Upon a successful surgery carried out on Bashirat by Dr Jamiu Mohammed on the same date, Mohammed handed over the placenta of the newborn baby to his hospital attendant, Fatima Suleiman of Agaka area of Ilorin, to give same to Abdulfatai Jimoh, the father of the new baby; but instead, the suspect, Suleiman, delivered the placenta to one Salahudeen Ibrahim to use for a charm, with the hope of getting monetary rewards from Ibrahim.
"The suspects were arrested; they have confessed to the crime and will soon appear in court.
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text:
Q: How can I create a solution level NuGet package for an entire project? I have created a NuGet gallery in my company.
I want to create and publish a solution level NuGet package.
Everyone who will install the package will not get a dll but an entire project added to his/her visual studio solution.
Just like adding an existing project, the user will get a project with source code classes and everything is ready to use.
Just build it and use  it.
I know it's possible, but couldn't find any documentation.
Anyone?

A: It is possible to add any files (not only .dll) and even directory structures to a NuGet package, so in theory you could store all files belonging to a project in a package and publish that. However, it is only possible to install NuGet packages into an existing project, meaning that you won't be able to add the packaged files as new project to any solution. In addition, the contained files will be put to the solution's packages folder, not to a solution or project folder.
As an alternative, consider creating a Template project instead of a NuGet package, as explained in How to: Create Project Templates and my blog post Creating template projects. This will result in a .vsix file that any developer can install as Visual Studio Add-In, the templated project will then appear in Visual Studio's File -> New -> Project... dialog as new project type and can be added to any solution.
Similar to your NuGet gallery, it is also possible to create a private Visual Studio Gallery to share such Add-Ins within, for example, a company, as explained in this MSDN article.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


text:
Beggsboro A.F.C.is an Irish association football club based in Cabra, Dublin. They were founded in 1938. The club plays at Kilkiernan Road. Beggsboro compete in the Leinster Senior League. The club competed in the 2013 FAI Cup, but did not make it out of the first round.

Honours
FAI Junior Cup
Winners: 1983–84: 1
Runners Up: 1987–88: 1

References

Leinster Senior League (association football) clubs
Association football clubs in Dublin (city)
1938 establishments in Ireland

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


The fourth volume in the Tales Behind the Veils series picks up after Tyler's Diary of an Engaged Wedding Planner ends. It features Maggie, Cabe's mom, as the heroine with Tyler and Cabe both present in the storyline. Maggie is a roller coaster ride of emotions with parallel love stories that prove love is a risk no matter what age you are.
Violet Howe is the author of the Tales Behind the Veils series and the Cedar Creek Series. Violet enjoys writing romantic suspense, romantic women's fiction, and chick lit. She and her knight in shining armor live in Central Florida with their three adorable but spoiled dogs. When she's not writing, Violet is usually watching movies, reading, or planning her next travel adventure. She is a member of the Florida Writer's Association and the Romance Writers of America.
Maggie - Stories Behind the Veil by Violet. I specifically chose this book when I read that the author used to be a wedding planner. However, once I started the book, I forgot about the wedding planning topic as I was sucked into Maggie's story.
It was painful to read about her relationship with Gerry, but it helped you understand her baggage and reactions to things Dax would do or say. I was ready to smack her daughter but the author did a great job of explaining both points of views. I loved her friends that stayed with her through everything and were always there to help her.
Dax was one of my favorite heros. Not a hero like Thor, but relationship hero. His actions were those that I treasure in a spouse. I think my favorite scene was when he came back in from the truck and said he didn't want to leave while she was upset; he wanted to be with her. *sigh. My tie for first place was when he fell off the horse. His backstory surprised me and broke my heart. It was so beautiful when he shared it with her.
These characters have stayed with me and I am telling everyone they need to read Maggie's story.
Sexual content 4, several physical scenes, several situations where she is thinking in detail.
Highly enjoyable continuation of the series. Can be read as a stand alone. I can't wait for more from Violet.
5.0 out of 5 starsAbsolutely fantastic and REAL!!
This is a very realistic story about having a second chance at love for both characters. This was my first book of the series, but now I can't wait to read about Cabe and Tyler. This definitely stands on its own.
This is probably one of the most "real" books I've read in a long time. The nuances of life in central Florida were a joy to read and this story definitely took its time to build and for love to grow.
There is much heartbreak in both their pasts and they both deal with that in completely opposite ways which almost tears them apart. You will laugh, giggle, swoon, cry and cheer for Maggie and Dax. I also loved the movie references – I'm a sucker for pop culture tidbits in novels.
I can't really do this book justice for how great I felt it was. It was a joy to read and you really felt like you knew these characters and cried along with their pain. This book was just fantastic!
I voluntarily reviewed this book after requesting it from the publisher.
I started reading the A Tales Behind the Veils as my granddaughter was actually a wedding planner in Orlando. the other 3 books were about Tyler and Cabe, the wedding planner and her son. Maggie was always in the books but as the Mother of the groom. In this book, her daughter Galen is gettting married. Tyler and Maggie are making all the arrangements as Galen lives out of town. They venture to a ranch to check out their wedding venue. They are promptly greeted with a run away horse who throws the rider into a lake right in front of them in February no less. Maggie and Dax are immediately attracted. We know from the other books that Maggie is not interested in a man after her experience with Gerry Tucker. This book tells Maggie's story of how a very young Diva falls for a very powerful man who convinces her her she needs to rest with a broken foot. As the star of the ballet she is upset and he convinces her to just let him take control. he did and the rest is in the book. Being from central FLorida, I love to read books that are set in this location. You can get visuals of where they are without really there. yes a cowboy and a dancer can make things work. I hope the series continues with Galen's story next.
I loved this book! Maggie was engaging and had a great mix of past life, current life and even a few scenes with Tyler and Cabe (from previous books)! I loved having the insight as to how she came to be and how her family was formed. While this is the fourth book, you could easily read this first and then read the first three. In fact, I'm thinking of re-reading the first three with my new found perspective. Also, Dax...super hot. I'm looking forward to seeing him again in future books and will seriously persuade my husband to take some dance lessons with me. ;) If you liked any of Violet's previous books, you will love Maggie.


Person » Tim Bradstreet is credited in 727 issues.
Tim Bradstreet is a comic book cover artist, famous for The Punisher and Hellblazer series.
Tim Bradstreet, a self taught artist, primarily uses models for his projects. Two of his preferred models are Tom O'Brian and actor Tom Jane for the Punisher series. He would also use Jane as a model for Criminal Macabre.
Bradstreet started his comic book work with Dragon Chiang. He has also provided covers for Hard Looks and many Star Wars titles, all at Dark Horse Comics. However, his darker, twisted style seemed to be a perfect fit at Vertigo and he would go on to provide covers for Gangland, Unknown Soldier, Human Target, and his most notable and recognized work, on Hellblazer.
At the same time, his work was seen on the covers of Blade and The Punisher, at Marvel Comics. His art on Punisher would grace the covers through most of the series various incarnations since it's re-launch with Marvel Knights, and carry over into the MAX Comics imrint.
His covers for both Hellblazer and The Punisher would earn multiple awards and nominations.
Currently Bradstreet is providing covers for Dynamite Entertainment's Jennifer Blood series.
Bradstreet served as a concept artist for Guillermo del Toro on Blade II. He also worked on various promotional material for the Marvel and Lions Gate film, The Punisher. He would return to provide the art for a stop motion animated scene for the extended DVD, depicting Frank Castle on a mission in Kuwait.
He was hired to design an album cover for heavy metal band Iron Maiden for A Matter of Life and Death.


The heart of Ham energy Deluxe, Rig Control provides a customizable surface to power your human transceiver mistreatment its built-in estimator assisted ascendance interface. Rig ascendance allows you to organize buttons, sliders, and drop-downs to toggle radio options, select modes and device settings, and bodily function different unwavering inputs via your calculator screen. HRD Rig bodily function brings out features interred in a current rig's menus, making it easy for you to optimize your rig with a few clicks of the mouse.
I person a European FC28 radio set I am conveyance to the U. What compartment can I use to legally and safely operate on U. Who can use a broadcasting system on 50 or 53MHz in the U. If an canonised drug user is flight on 50MHz, can a non-licensed man of affairs fly on a chum cord or with the supervision of the licensed operator? Only these unpaid permit holders are permitted to use wireless links to control "model craft", specified as model airplanes and boats. The Futaba module which begins TK, which is produced for the 9Z radios, is safe and sound and ratified for use in the U. At this minute no 3-channel car receivers are available on 50MHz. (FUTL17**) Can I use a reason radio comparable the 3PJS on 50MHz (Ham band, 6 meters)? You will also wealthy person to acquisition an R127DF or similar receiver on 50MHz.


Nowadays, many people who do not even have the time to spare to understand what is really going on around them--particularly those absorbed into the struggle for survival who mainly let the TV "experts" think for them--usually form the impression that we live in a chaotic world. I refer, of course, to the victims of neoliberal globalization - the great majority of the world population - and not those who benefit from it, including many in the intelligentsia who can not even see that there is a New World Order (NWO) based on neoliberal globalization and managed by a Transnational Elite (TE)-basically the elites of the "G7" countries. However, it is only within such an analytical framework that one can really understand why our world is anything but chaotic, in the common sense of the unpredictable disorder.
The beheadings in Iraq repeated continuously on TV screens (with the obvious intention of the media controlled by the TE to whip up islamophobia and distract attention from the far bigger massacre in Gaza, as a counterbalance to the rise of anti-Zionism around the world) are directly connected with the NATO-led invasion and the consequent destruction of Iraq. Similarly, the latter is directly linked to the previous brutal NATO bombings in Yugoslavia that were designed to dismember that country, as well as to the similar NATO bombings in Libya that followed, which destroyed the country's infrastructure and converted it into a 'failed state'. Then, came the organized armed "insurrection" in Syria and nobody will be surprised if similar to the Libyan NATO bombings are about to start there, on the pretext of fighting Islamist terrorists (the same ones who up to a few months ago were supported by the TE with the aim to overthrow Assad!). Finally, we saw this year that the model of armed 'insurrections' was transplanted to the European soil itself, in Ukraine, which threatens to draw even the entire continent into an all-out war.
At the same time, we witness the continued inhumane Zionist ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, or the "incremental genocide", as it has been called by the Jewish historian Ilan Pappe, who is one of the most important historians who substantiated it, and at the forefront of the few truly anti-Zionist Jews. This is in contrast to the international Zionist elite, who are now busy in passing fascist inspired "anti-racist" laws into EU parliaments. Thus, a legally mandatory way of perceiving even historical events such as the "Holocaust" is introduced, which now must be recognized (with the threat of imprisonment!) as a historically unique genocide. This despite the fact that, for example, the genocide of the Armenians (or the Armenian "Holocaust" as it is sometimes called ) was probably much more extensive - not to mention the genocide of Indians in the Americas, Australia etc., which essentially wiped out whole nations! This is of course an old debate that began in these countries which introduced first similar legislation, given their involvement or sympathies to Nazi Germany (i.e. Germany itself, Austria, Switzerland, France etc) but has now resurfaced given the present EU systematic effort to force European parliaments to pass similar legislation (the latest example being Greece). France, in particular, became infamous when it used such a law to prosecute even the well known communist and resistance fighter Roger Garaudy as "Holocaust denier", establishing the fascist principle that historical events are not subject of historical research and collective memory but a matter to be dealt with by the state and whoever controls it!
The link between all these wars and massacres, but also the corresponding economic warfare now strangling the Greek people, the Portuguese, the Spaniards (and currently even the French people who still resist globalization), is the systematic effort by the TE running the NWO of neoliberal globalization to integrate all peoples not yet fully integrated into it. However, despite the nonsense of the degenerate "Left", which talks about "bad" neoliberal policies etc. imposed by some "traitors" of social democracy, or the equivalent nonsense of the Palaeolithic Marxist Left which attempts to "explain" these wars with the doctrine of "intra-imperialist conflicts" the consequence Is simply the turn of the popular strata to the patriotic or nationalist right, if not the far right itself, as we have seen in the last European elections. The ideological bankruptcy of the 'left' became evident when it was unable to explain the unprecedented unity of the TE in supporting all these wars, despite the 'intra-imperialist conflicts'. Unless, of course, the only imperialisms around are on the one hand the TE imperialism and on the other the Russian 'imperialism', despite the fact that the Russian Federation has not begun any imperialist war in its history nor of course controls the world economy through Transnational Corporations (TNCs), or the world polity through hundreds of military bases around the world, or finally the world media, through press corporations and press magnates.
All this, at the very moment when the TE-controlled media are busy in promοting the myth of Russia bent to conquer the world whereas any theory about the NWΟ of neolibereal globalization and the TE running it is dismissed (with the decisive help o the same "Left") as a conspiracy theory. Unsurprisingly, this "Left" accuses Hollande for an about turn with respect to his socialist promises forgetting that his predecessor Mitterand was also forced to do exactly the same about turn, let alone Oscar Lafontaine in Germany who was forced to resign when he attempted to introduce economic policies not compatible with neoliberal globalization.
This is of course because it is now inconceivable for any country fully integrated into the NWO to implement any different policies from the universal neoliberal policies. This is not some sort of a conspiracy, or just a bad ideology implemented by some baddies (bankers, politicians etc). This is just the inevitable consequence of opening and liberalizing the markets for capital, commodities and labour and joining the international institutions controlled by the TE (WTO, IMF, WB etc) whose job is to impose these policies when e.g. a member country asks for a loan or to benefit from an investment program. Needless to add that the dismantling of economic self-reliance by globalization and the creation of export economies everywhere turns most countries integrated into the NWO and particularly the weaker ones into beggars of the TNCs' investment, so that they could avoid stagnation and borrowing . THerefore, every country knows very well to whose tune it should dance.
Furthermore, not only are the BRICS (except Russia) completely integrated into the NWO, without sharing any significant transnational sovereignty (economic, political, military, cultural and media power at the transnational level), but even worse, their national sovereignty is clearly inferior to that of Russia. China, for example, is highly integrated into the global economy, a fact that has led to a dramatic increase in inequality in this "socialist" country, since it was fully integrated into the NWO, whereas its status as an economic superpower is clearly based on its huge population (the purchasing power of its GDP per head of the population is 99th in the world) and the significant industrial and trade power created by the massive move of TNCs from the TE countries, in the past thirty years or so, in the pursuit of production cost minimisation and profit maximisation.
The above conclusions about Russia were confirmed also last week at the NATO Summit, in a Cardiff under occupation by the security services , where, discussions were held on how to directly subdue the people in Eastern Ukraine (who are resisting the junta imposed on them via a "coup from below' organised by the Transnational Elite) but also to indirectly subdue the Russian people, the vast majority of whom support the resistance struggle.
This article is a synthesis of two articles that were first published in TF's weekly column in Sunday's Eleftherotypia (a Greek daily published in Athens) on 31/8/2014 and 7//9/2014. The translation into English was edited by Jonathan Rutherford.


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Q: Are there a finite number of trees with $k$ leaves and no vertices of degree $2$?
Given a fixed positive integer $k$. Show that there are only finitely many trees containing $k$ leaves and zero vertices of degree $2$.

I tried to use the theorem related to rooted trees and tried to prove it by contradiction, but could not quite use the condition of having zero vertices of degree $2$.
Is it even related to rooted trees theorem or can it be proved by contradiction? Can we use the fact that a tree with $m$ edges has $m+1$ vertices?

A: This is easy to prove using the following two lemmata:
Lemma 1: The sum of the degrees of all vertices in a graph equals twice the number of edges.
Lemma 2: A tree with $n$ vertices has $n-1$ edges.
(The first lemma is a simple consequence of the definition of the degree of a vertex, i.e. the number of edges connected to it, and the fact that each edge connects to exactly two vertices.  The second lemma can be proved by induction on the number of vertices: assuming that the lemma holds for all trees with $n-1$ vertices, take any tree with $n$ vertices and consider what happens when you merge any two adjacent vertices and remove the edge between them.)
Taken together these lemmata imply that, for any tree with $n$ vertices having the degrees $d_1, d_2, \dots, d_n$ respectively, $$\sum_{i=1}^n d_i = 2n - 2 \quad \text{and thus} \quad \sum_{i=1}^n (d_i - 2) = -2.$$  In other words, the sum of the degrees of all vertices minus two per vertex is the same (and equal to $-2$) for all trees!
In particular, we can see that the summand $d_i - 2$ is negative (and equal to $-1$ except for the degenerate case of the single-vertex tree) for leaves, zero for vertices of degree $2$ and positive (at at least one) for all other vertices.  For the sum to equal $-2$, as it must, the positive contribution of each vertex with degree $d_i > 2$ must therefore be cancelled out by at least one leaf (and there need to be at least two extra leaves on top of that).
Thus, a tree with $k$ leaves can have at most $k - 2$ vertices of degree greater than $2$.
For a tree with $k$ leaves and no vertices of degree $2$, this  implies that the total number of vertices in the tree can be at most $2k - 2$.  And since the number of vertices in such a tree is thus bounded, and since there's only a finite number of possible ways of connecting any given number of vertices into a tree, this further implies that the total number of such trees is also bounded.
We can also see that, for this result to hold, it is essential that the number of vertices of degree $2$ be bounded (in your case by zero).  Otherwise we could take any tree with $n > 1$ nodes and easily construct an infinite family of trees with the same number of leaves just by taking any pair of adjacent vertices and inserting an arbitrarily long linear chain of vertices of degree $2$ between them.

A: Consider an arbitrary tree with $k$ leaves and no vertices of degree $2$.  Let $\epsilon$ represent the number of edges and $\nu_j$ represent the number of vertices with a degree of $j$ (so that $\nu_1=k$ and $\nu_2=0$).  We know that $\sum_{j=1}^\infty j\nu_j=2\epsilon$ (since that's true for all graphs) and $\sum_{j=1}^\infty \nu_j=\epsilon+1$ (since it's a tree).  So we can combine the equations as follows (where the index of the summations have been taken out).
$$\sum j\nu_j=2\big(\sum\nu_j-1\big)=2\sum \nu_j-2\\
2\sum\nu_j-\sum j\nu_j=2\\\sum(2-j)\nu_j=2$$
The RHS is positive, so the LHS must be as well.  The first few terms of the LHS is $\nu_1+0\nu_2-\nu_3-2\nu_4-\ldots.$ This could not be positive if $\nu_3+\nu_4+\nu_5+\ldots>\nu_1$.  Since we know that $\nu_2=0$, we can conclude that a tree with $k$ leaves and no vertices of degree $2$ cannot have more than $2k$ vertices.  Since the number of trees with fewer than $2k$ vertices is finite, we are done.


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Driving Miss DaisyAaron Jurgens2018-10-09T22:27:06+00:00
by: Alfred Uhry (Classic–all ages)
The story focuses on the relationship of a crotchety elderly white Southern Jewish woman, Daisy Werthan, and dignified African-American man, Hoke Colburn, who becomes her chauffeur from 1948 to 1973, and the changes in attitude and life they both experience. The play was the first in Uhry's Atlanta Trilogy, and won the 1988 Pulizer Prize for Drama. The story was later made famous on film by Jessica Tandy and Morgan Freeman, and has won awards in revival on Broadway, as well as being remade and filmed numerous times for TV.
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