Los que dieron honra y prez a la patria, aun después de muertos hubieron de sufrir los ataques injustos de sus imitadores y plagiarios. Sin contemplaciones es preciso proceder contra estos malandrines. De Cervantes, como de Quevedo, de Shakespeare y de Camões, solo se puede escribir en son de elogio, ¿hacia quiénes tenderemos nuestras miradas? Esta obra de por fuerza ha de ser de reverencia para con los unos y de irreverencia para con los otros. Procederemos contra la obra literaria, no contra las personas, merecedoras -casi siempre- de todo nuestro respeto. Burla burlando se pueden decir las verdades, la amenidad no excluye la doctrina. Dios te guarde, amable lector, de muchos comentarios y críticas. Y si fueras autor famoso, te recomiendo, sobre todo, que conjures tus obras, no caigan en manos de Cejador, Villaespesa, Martínez Sierra, Casares o Rodríguez Marín.
Luis Astrana Marín

Nunca ha habido una doctrina contra la que mejor se haya escrito que la del Derecho Divino de los Reyes. Que la docrina es absurda si se juzga desde el punto de vista del pensamiento político moderno es algo que no requiere ni prueba ni demostración. Pero el punto de vista moderno no es el único, y el hecho de que la doctrina nos parezca absurda es lo menos importante de ella, excepto por cuanto a que nos induce a inquirir su verdadero sentido y valor. Tampoco "El Derecho Divino de los Reyes" se diferencia, por lo que a lo absurdo se refiere, de otras teorías políticas del siglo XVII. La doctrina consistente en la creencia de un pacto original, no fue menos ridícula y sí más explosiva en la práctica que las nociones del Derecho Irrevocable y de la Obediencia Pasiva.
En la presente obra el autor desarrolla las proposiciones fundamentales del Derecho Divino de los Reyes, aquellas que enuncian que la monarquía es una institución de ordenación divina, que el derecho hereditario es irrevocable, que los reyes son responsables solo ante Dios, y, por último, que la no-resistencia y la obediencia pasiva son prescripciones divinas.

«The Time Traveler?s Story and a part of the introductory conversation appeared as a
serial in the New Review. Several descriptive passages in the story had previously appeared in dialogue form in the National Observer, and the explanation of the «principles «of Time Traveling given in this book is inserted from the latter paper. I desire to make the usual acknowledgments».
The Time Traveller (for so it will be convenient to speak of him) was expounding a recondite matter to us. His grey eyes shone and twinkled, and his usually pale face was flushed and animated. The fire burned brightly, and the soft radiance of the incandescent lights in the lilies of silver caught the bubbles that flashed and passed in our glasses.
Our chairs, being his patents, embraced and caressed us rather than submitted to be sat upon, and there was that luxurious after-dinner atmosphere when thought roams gracefully free of the trammels of precision. And he put it to us in this way marking the points with a lean forefinger as we sat and lazily admired his earnestness over this new paradox (as we thought it) and his fecundity.

«When I lived in London the horror was well-nigh insupportable. I could not get away from men: their voices came through windows; locked doors were flimsy safeguards. I would go out into the streets to fight with my delusion, and prowling women would mew after me; furtive, craving men glance jealously at me; weary, pale workers go coughing by me with tired eyes and eager paces, like wounded deer dripping blood; old people, bent and dull, pass murmuring to themselves; and, all unheeding, a ragged tail of gibing children...»
The only island known to exist in the region in which my uncle was picked up is Noble?s Isle, small volcanic islet and uninhabited.
It was visited in 1891 by H. M. S. Scorpion. A party of sailors then landed, but found nothing living thereon except certain curious white moths, some hogs and rabbits, and some rather peculiar rats. So that this narrative is without confirmation in its most essential particular. With that understood, there seems no harm in putting this strange story before the public in accordance, as I believe, with my uncle?s intentions. There is at least this much in its behalf: my uncle passed out of human knowledge about latitude 5 degrees S. and longitude 105 degrees E., and reappeared in the same part of the ocean after a space of eleven months.

?When a traveler in north central Massachusetts takes the wrong fork at the junction of the Aylesbury pike just beyond Dean?s Corners he comes upon a lonely and curious country. The ground gets higher, and the brier-bordered stone walls press closer and closer against the ruts of the dusty, curving road. The trees of the frequent forest belts seem too large, and the wild weeds, brambles, and grasses attain a luxuriance not often found in settled regions. At the same time the planted fields appear singularly few and barren; while the sparsely scattered houses wear a surprizing uniform aspect of age, squalor, and dilapidation?. (The Dunwich Horror)
?It is an unfortunate fact that the bulk of humanity is too limited in its mental vision to weigh with patience and intelligence those isolated phenomena, seen and felt only
by a psychologically sensitive few, which lie outside Its common experience?. (The Tomb)
Howard Phillips Lovecraft (August 20, 1890, March 15, 1937), a prolific and problematic writer, is often considered one of the greatest authors of early American horror, science-fiction, and ?weird? fiction. His stories echo such great horror and fantasy authors as Poe, Dunsany, and Chambers. But Lovecraft also brought to his writing a ?cosmic horror,? which sprang out of his fantasies and nightmares.

«At last I have come back from my fortnight?s absence. Our friends have already been two days in Roulettenburg. I imagined that they were expecting me with the greatest eagerness; I was mistaken, however. The General had an extremely independent air, he talked to me condescendingly and sent me away to his sister. I even fancied that the General was a little ashamed to look at me. Marya Filippovna was tremendously busy and scarcely spoke to me; she took the money, however, counted it, and listened to my whole report?»
The strange Englishman I had met first in Prussia, where we had happened to sit vis-avis in a railway train in which I was travelling to overtake our party; while, later, I had run across him in France, and again in Switzerland twice within the space of two weeks! To think, therefore, that I should suddenly encounter him again here, in Roulettenberg! Never in my life had I known a more retiring man, for he was shy to the pitch of imbecility, yet well aware of the fact (for he was no fool). At the same time, he was a gentle, amiable sort of an individual, and, even on our first encounter in Prussia I had contrived to draw him out, and he had told me that he had just been to the North Cape, and was now anxious to visit the fair at Nizhni Novgorod.

?And some day,? she said, confusedly remembering O?Hara?s prophecies, ?there will come for you a great Red Bull on a green field, and the Colonel riding on his tall horse, yes, and??dropping into English??nine hundred devils.? ?Ah,? said Kim, ?I shall remember. A Red Bull and a Colonel on a horse will come, but first, my father said, will come the two men making ready the ground for these matters. That is how, my father said, they always did; and it is always so when men work magic.?
Kim (Kimball O?Hara) is the orphaned son of an Irish soldier (Kimball O?Hara sr., a former colour sergeant and later an employee of an indian railway company) and a poor Irish mother (a former nanny in a colonel?s household) who have both died in poverty. Living a vagabond existence in India under British rule in the late 19th century, Kim earns his living by begging and running small errands on the streets of Lahore. He occasionally works for Mahbub Ali, a Pashtun horse trader who is one of the native operatives of the British secret service. Kim is so immersed in the local culture that few realise he is a white child, although he carries a packet of documents from his father entrusted to him by an Indian woman who cared for him.

«When we started for our drive the sun was shining brightly on Munich, and the air was full of the joyousness of early summer. Just as we were about to depart, Herr Delbrück (the maître d?hôtel of the Quatre Saisons, where I was staying) came down, bareheaded, to the carriage and, after wishing me a pleasant drive, said to the coachman, still holding his hand on the handle of the carriage door».
A few months before the lamented death of my husband I might say even as the shadow of death was over him-he planned three series of short stories for publication, and the present volume is one of them. To his original list of stories in this book, I have added an hitherto unpublished episode from Dracula. It was originally excised owing to the length of the book, and may prove of interest to the many readers of what is considered my husband?s most remarkable work. The other stories have already been published in English and American periodicals. Had my husband lived longer, he might have seen fit to revise this work, which is mainly from the earlier years of his strenuous life. But, as fate has entrusted to me the issuing of it, I consider it fitting and proper to let it go forth practically as it was left by him.

Del antiguo Buenos Aires no queda ya casi nada, apenas alguna casa de auténtico estilo colonial. Pero en breve estas pocas casas también habrán desaparecido y solo nos quedará su memoria y el escaso material gráfico, disperso en libros, revistas y láminas sueltas, cada vez más raras y caras. Reunir todo esto, ordenarlo y fijarlo en un solo libro antes de que desaparezcan, comparar cosa por cosa y sitio por sitio, cómo era y cómo es, será el plan y fin de esta obra, escrita sin pretensiones literarias pero sí con claridad y sencillez, con gran acopio de datos, vistas y láminas antiguas. El autor comienza con un estudio de los monumentos más representativos, siguiendo por las plazas y paseos públicos, demostrando con láminas lo que antes se veía en cada uno de los sitios, para terminar con los trajes, usos y viejas costumbres de la ciudad de Buenos Aires.

No hay ciencia sin conciencia. La precedente afirmación tiene aplicación adecuada refiriéndonos a Francisco de Vitoria. La ciencia insensible puede servir al progreso material, mas no contribuye a la dignificación humana. Es preciso que la inquietud, exigente e inflexible del bien y de la justicia, viva como imperativo categórico en el alma del pensador; la ciencia al servicio de la verdad se impersonaliza y se desnacionaliza; es de todos los hombres y vive en todos los tiempos. Brown Scott publica, en las páginas de este libro, un estudio sosteniendo que es Francisco de Vitoria (fraile español del siglo XVI) el indiscutible fundador del Derecho Internacional moderno.
Texto extraído del prólogo de Camilo Barcia Trelles.