Classics Books

CHAPTER I. BEGINNING OF THE CONSTITUTIONAL MOVEMENT. The constitutional movement of Japan began in a spontaneous agitation of the whole body politic when the nation was irritated by the sudden contact with foreigners. The sense of national weakness added a force to this agitation. Had not the foreigners come, the Restoration might have been effected, feudalism might have been abolished, but the new... more...

CHAPTER I THE SYSTEM Toward the close of a May afternoon in the year 1884, Miss Priscilla Batte, having learned by heart the lesson in physical geography she would teach her senior class on the morrow, stood feeding her canary on the little square porch of the Dinwiddie Academy for Young Ladies. The day had been hot, and the fitful wind, which had risen in the direction of the river, was just beginning... more...

THE JOY OF ANTICIPATION Elk Creek Valley was a blue and golden place that mid-summer morning in the Big Horn Country. It seemed like a joyous secret tucked away among the mountains, whose hazy, far-away summits were as blue as the sky above them. The lower ranges, too, were blue from purple haze and gray-green sagebrush, while the bare, brown foot-hills tumbling about their feet were golden in the... more...

When, in after ages, the literature of Canada comes to be written, it is to be hoped that among the mighty sons and daughters of genius now unknown, or as yet unborn, some room will be kept for the brave and loving pioneers who “gave the people of their best,” and sang the songs of duty and patriotism and hope, ere life in our young land had ceased to be a struggle. With the growth of wealth and... more...

CHAPTER I. Say, ye oppressed by some fantastic woes, Some jarring nerve that baffles your repose, Who press the downy couch while slaves advance With timid eye to read the distant glance, Who with sad prayers the weary doctor tease To name the nameless, ever-new disease, Who with mock patience dire complaints endure, Which real pain and that alone can cure, How would you bear in real pain to lie... more...

No description available

CHILD'S FIRST PICTURE BOOK     THE FIRE HORSES stand ready in their stalls, and at the sound of the alarm gong the stall chains are let down and each horse goes quickly to his place at the engine, and the big iron collars are clamped around their necks and off they go to the fire, with the engine, at break-neck speed.     THE AUTOMOBILE FIRE ENGINE can go to the fires very swiftly. Many times... more...

In the old Stock of Fife, there was not perhaps an individual whose exertions were followed by consequences of such a remarkable nature as those of Davie Duff, popularly called "The Thane of Fife," who, from a very humble parentage, rose to fill one of the chairs of the magistracy of his native burgh. By industry and economy in early life, he obtained the means of erecting, solely on his own... more...

THE MYSTERIOUS WANDERER. CHAPTER I. "Of all the passions inherent in man, I think pride the most despicable, and for which he has the least excuse! If he have sense and abilities, they ought rather to guard his bosom from so contemptible an inmate, than implant it there. It is a passion insulting to reason, beneath the generosity of human nature, and in the highest degree degrading to the character... more...

CHAPTER I During the spring and summer of 1861 the people of the North presented the appearance of a great political unit. All alleged emphatically that the question was simply of the Union, and upon this issue no Northerner could safely differ from his neighbors. Only a few of the more cross-grained ones among the Abolitionists were contemptuously allowed to publish the selfishness of their morality,... more...