Classics Books

Chapter I The Germans Are Coming! The Germans had already entered Brussels, their scouts were reported on the outskirts of Ghent; a little farther now, over behind the horizon wind-mills, and we might at any moment come on them. For more than a fortnight we had been hurrying eastward, hearing, through cable despatches and wireless, the far-off thunder of that vast gray tide rumbling down to France. The... more...

CHAPTER I. ENLISTING At 6.45 p.m. on Saturday, July 25, 1914, Alec and I determined to take part in the Austro-Servian War. I remember the exact minute, because we were standing on the "down" platform of Earl's Court Station, waiting for the 6.55 through train to South Harrow, and Alec had just remarked that we had ten minutes to wait. We had travelled up to London, intending to work in... more...

CHAPTER I. "For that mercy," said Gorman, "you may thank with brief thanksgiving whatever gods there be." We were discussing, for perhaps the twentieth time, the case of poor Ascher. Gorman had reminded me, as he often does, that I am incapable of understanding Ascher or entering into his feelings, because I am a man of no country and therefore know nothing of the emotion of patriotism.... more...

CHAPTER I The one opened the door with a latch-key and went in, followed by a young fellow who awkwardly removed his cap.  He wore rough clothes that smacked of the sea, and he was manifestly out of place in the spacious hall in which he found himself.  He did not know what to do with his cap, and was stuffing it into his coat pocket when the other took it from him.  The act was done quietly and... more...

French Measure. “For thy walls a pretty slight drollery.” The Second Part of King Henry IV. “A bad lot. Yes, sir, a thoroughly bad lot.” “You don’t mean it.” “Yes, ma’am, a bad lot is the Uphill people. Good for nothing and ungrateful! I’ve known them these thirty-years, and no one will do anything with them.” The time was the summer of 1822. The place was a garden, somewhat gone... more...

CHAPTER I Our son, Thomas Jefferson, and his wife, Maggie, have been wadin’ through a sea of trouble. He down with inflamatory rumatiz so a move or jar of any kind, a fly walkin’ over the bedclothes, would most drive him crazy; and she with nervious prostration, brought on I spoze by nussin’ her pardner and her youngest boy, Thomas Josiah (called Tommy), through the measles, that had left him... more...

THE SLAVE'S SOCIAL CIRCLE. With the growing population in the Southern States, the increase of mulattoes has been very great. Society does not frown upon the man who sits with his half-white child upon his knee whilst the mother stands, a slave, behind his chair. In nearly all the cities and towns of the Slave States, the real negro, or clear black, does not amount to more than one in four of the... more...

"SHE WANTED HER RIGHTS" Lorinda Cagwin invited Josiah and me to a reunion of the Allen family at her home nigh Washington, D.C., the birthplace of the first Allen we knowed anything about, and Josiah said: "Bein' one of the best lookin' and influential Allens on earth now, it would be expected on him to attend to it." And I fell in with the idee, partly to be done as I would... more...

CHAPTER IMISS BOLTWOOD OF BROOKLYN IS LOST IN THE MUD When the windshield was closed it became so filmed with rain that Claire fancied she was piloting a drowned car in dim spaces under the sea. When it was open, drops jabbed into her eyes and chilled her cheeks. She was excited and thoroughly miserable. She realized that these Minnesota country roads had no respect for her polite experience on Long... more...

A cloudy day: do you know what that is in a town of iron-works? The sky sank down before dawn, muddy, flat, immovable. The air is thick, clammy with the breath of crowded human beings. It stifles me. I open the window, and, looking out, can scarcely see through the rain the grocer's shop opposite, where a crowd of drunken Irishmen are puffing Lynchburg tobacco in their pipes. I can detect the... more...