Classics Books

A MUSICAL INSTRUMENT.What was he doing, the great god Pan,Down in the reeds by the river?Spreading ruin and scattering ban,Splashing and paddling with hoofs of a goat,And breaking the golden lilies afloatWith the dragon-fly on the river.He tore out a reed, the great god Pan,From the deep cool bed of the river:The limpid water turbidly ran,And the broken lilies a-dying lay,And the dragon-fly had fled... more...

Chapter I Miriam sat in her lowly cabin, painfully rocking her body to and fro; for a great sorrow had fallen upon her life. She had been the mother of three children, two had died in their infancy, and now her last, her loved and only child was gone, but not like the rest, who had passed away almost as soon as their little feet had touched the threshold of existence. She had been entangled in the... more...

PREFACE. The purpose held in view by those who place the study of Milton in high school English courses is twofold: first, that youth may seasonably become acquainted with a portion of our great classic poetry; and, secondly, that they may in this poetry encounter and learn to conquer difficulties more serious than those they have met in the literature they have hitherto read. It is for the teacher to... more...

CHAPTER I WHAT CAN HAVE BECOME OF HIM?Wewere all at tea in the nursery. All except him. The door burst open and James put his head in.'If you please, Mrs. Brough,' he began,—'Mrs. Brough' is the servants' name for nurse. Mamma calls her 'Brough' sometimes, but we always call her 'nurse,' of course,—'If you please, Mrs. Brough, is Master Peterkin... more...

WISDOM IN THE WOODS. I had seen and heard little of Hartman since our college days. There he was counted a youth of eminent promise: after that I knew that he had traveled, written something or other, and practised law—or professed it, and not too eagerly: then he had disappeared. Last May I stumbled on him in a secluded region where I had gone to fish and rest, after a year of too close attention to... more...

I. On their way back to the farm-house where they were boarding, Sewell's wife reproached him for what she called his recklessness. "You had no right," she said, "to give the poor boy false hopes. You ought to have discouraged him—that would have been the most merciful way—if you knew the poetry was bad. Now, he will go on building all sorts of castles in the air on your praise,... more...

CHAPTER I A Testimony I have the very best of reasons for believing in the power of the personal touch in Christian work, especially as it may be used in the winning of others to Christ. My boyhood's home was in the city of Richmond, in the State of Indiana, my mother was a devout member of the Methodist Episcopal Church, and in the first years of my life in company with my father and the other... more...

Part One INTRODUCTION The writer of this singular autobiography was my cousin, who died at the ——- Criminal Lunatic Asylum, of which he had been an inmate three years. He had been removed thither after a sudden and violent attack of homicidal mania (which fortunately led to no serious consequences), from ——- Jail, where he had spent twenty-five years, having been condemned to penal servitude... more...

CHAPTER I Mrs. Ogilvie, red-haired according to the exact shade then in fashion, and dressed by Paquin, sat in her drawing-room reading the Court Journal. She was a woman who thought on the lines of Aristotle, despised most other women except Charlotte Corday, Judith, Joan of Arc, and a few more, and she dyed her hair and read the Court Journal. People who did not know her sometimes alluded to her as... more...

Coins are a source of information much used by historians. Elaborately detailed mining landscapes on 16th-century German coins in the National Museum, discovered by the curator of numismatics and brought to the author’s attention, led to this study of early mine-pumping devices. The Author: Robert P. Multhauf is curator of Science and Technology, Museum of History and Technology, in the Smithsonian... more...