Classics Books

I The oldest part of Stockholm is a little rocky island. Once it was the whole city. Popularly it is still spoken of as "The City." At one end of it stands the huge square-cut pile of the Royal Palace, looking with solemn indifference toward the more modern quarters across the ever hurried waters of the North River. Nearer the centre, and at the very top of the island, lies an open place called... more...

PREFACE This selection of "One hundred best books" is made after a different method and with a different purpose from the selections already in existence. Those apparently are designed to stuff the minds of young persons with an accumulation of "standard learning" calculated to alarm and discourage the boldest. The following list is frankly subjective in its choice; being indeed the... more...

INITIAL CHAPTER —SHOWING HOW MY NOVEL CAME TO BE WRITTEN. Scene, the hall in UNCLE ROLAND'S tower; time, night; season, winter. MR. CAXTON is seated before a great geographical globe, which he is turning round leisurely, and "for his own recreation," as, according to Sir Thomas Browne, a philosopher should turn round the orb of which that globe professes to be the representation and... more...

CHAPTER I. CHARACTERS. Mrs. Stanhope, a well-bred woman, accomplished in that branch of knowledge which is called the art of rising in the world, had, with but a small fortune, contrived to live in the highest company. She prided herself upon having established half a dozen nieces most happily, that is to say, upon having married them to men of fortunes far superior to their own. One niece still... more...

Henry Seton Merriman published his first novel, "Young Mistley," in 1888, when he was twenty-six years old. Messrs. Bentley's reader, in his critique on the book, spoke of its "powerful situations" and unconventionality of treatment: and, while dwelling at much greater length on its failings, declared, in effect, its faults to be the right faults, and added that, if "Young... more...

CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTORY SOME DETAILS OF THE BIOGRAPHY OF THAT HIGHLY RESPECTED GENTLEMAN STEPAN TROFIMOVITCH VERHOVENSKY. IN UNDERTAKING to describe the recent and strange incidents in our town, till lately wrapped in uneventful obscurity, I find myself forced in absence of literary skill to begin my story rather far back, that is to say, with certain biographical details concerning that talented and... more...

THE GENIUS OF JOSEPH CONRAD I In these piping days when fiction plays the handmaid or prophet to various propaganda; when the majority of writers are trying to prove something, or acting as venders of some new-fangled social nostrums; when the insistent drums of the Great God Réclame are bruising human tympani, the figure of Joseph Conrad stands solitary among English novelists as the very ideal of a... more...

FOREWORD “Given a Camp-fire, a group of friendly girls and a good story-teller who knows and loves the girls, and the ideals of a whole community may be lifted in a night.” The teen age girl is a great problem and at the same time a great opportunity. Her ideals seem low, yet there is no time in her life when she will more gladly follow a great ideal. She seems fickle, yet she is putting her... more...

Chapter I. Life in a Syrian Quarantine. Voyage from Alexandria to Beyrout--Landing at Quarantine--The Guardiano--Our Quarters--Our Companions--Famine and Feasting--The Morning--The Holy Man of Timbuctoo--Sunday in Quarantine--Islamism--We are Registered--Love through a Grating--Trumpets--The Mystery Explained--Delights of Quarantine--Oriental vs. American Exaggeration--A Discussion of Politics--Our... more...

I LIFE OF STEVENSON Robert Louis Stevenson[1] was born at Edinburgh on the 13 November 1850. His father, Thomas, and his grandfather, Robert, were both distinguished light-house engineers; and the maternal grandfather, Balfour, was a Professor of Moral Philosophy, who lived to be ninety years old. There was, therefore, a combination of Lux et Veritas in the blood of young Louis Stevenson, which in Dr.... more...