Classics Books

CHAPTER I THOUGHTS ON LIFE IN GENERAL Cupid will cause men to do many things; so will cupidity. I like economy too much as a virtue not to loathe it when it becomes a vice. Many virtues, when carried too far, become vices. Envy is a vice which does not pay. If you let your envy be apparent, you advertise your failure. Nothing is less common than common-sense. Whenever you can, pay cash for what you... more...

WASHING DAY TEMPERS. Down at the Henders' cottage all was misery and discomfort; the house was full of bad temper, steam, and the smell of soap-suds. It was washing-day, and the children hated washing-day. For one thing, Aunt Emma was always very cross, and for another, they never knew what to do with themselves. They were not allowed indoors, for they "choked up the place," she said,... more...

The reign of Philip the Second has occupied the pen of the historian more frequently—if we except that of Charles the Fifth—than any other portion of the Spanish annals. It has become familiar to the English reader through the pages of Watson, who has deservedly found favor with the public for the perspicuity of his style,—a virtue, however, not uncommon in his day,—for the sobriety of his... more...

CHAPTER I. NEEDLE-WORK, at best, yields but a small return. Yet how many thousands have no other resource in life, no other barrier thrown up between them and starvation! The manly stay upon which a woman has leaned suddenly fails, and she finds self-support an imperative necessity; yet she has no skill, no strength, no developed resources. In all probability she is a mother. In this case she must not... more...

CHAPTER I. Portrait of Our Hero. Once, in the spring-green years of the good old times, when our great-grandfathers were great-grandchildren themselves, there lived in the land of green Kentucky a sprout of a man, some dozen years old, who went by the name of Sprigg. And "Sprigg," for aught I know to the contrary, was his real name; though it has so little the sound of a name, I sometimes... more...

Chapter One The girl stood on a bank above a river flowing north. At her back crouched a dozen clean whitewashed buildings. Before her in interminable journey, day after day, league on league into remoteness, stretched the stern Northern wilderness, untrodden save by the trappers, the Indians, and the beasts. Close about the little settlement crept the balsams and spruce, the birch and poplar, behind... more...

THE LIFE OF SAMUEL JOHNSON, LL.D. Having left Ashbourne in the evening, we stopped to change horses at Derby, and availed ourselves of a moment to enjoy the conversation of my countryman, Dr. Butter, then physician there. He was in great indignation because Lord Mountstuart's bill for a Scotch militia[1] had been lost. Dr. Johnson was as violent against it. 'I am glad, (said he,) that... more...

The decade of the nineties in League history bids fair to surpass, in exciting events, that of every preceding series of years known in the annals of professional base ball. The decade in question began with the players' revolt in 1890 and was followed up by the secession of the old American Association, a fatal movement, which ended in the death of that organization in the winter of 1891-92; the... more...

PREFACE Ivan Alexandrovich Goncharov (1812-1891) was one of the leading members of the great circle of Russian writers who, in the middle of the nineteenth century, gathered around the Sovremmenik (Contemporary) under Nekrasov's editorship—a circle including Turgenev, Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Byelinsky, and Herzen. He had not the marked genius of the first three of these; but that he is so much... more...

CHAPTER I Admiral Dewey on His Flagship. A Stormy Day on Manila Bay—Call on Admiral Dewey—The Man in White—He Sticks to His Ship—How He Surprised Spaniards—Every Man Did His Duty on May-Day—How Dewey Looks and Talks—What He Said About War with Germany in Five Minutes—Feeds His Men on "Delicious" Fresh Meat from Australia—Photography Unjust to Him. Steaming across Manila Bay... more...