Classics Books

CHAPTER I JOHN HAS AN ADVENTURE The day had been very hot even for the Transvaal, where the days still know how to be hot in the autumn, although the neck of the summer is broken—especially when the thunderstorms hold off for a week or two, as they do occasionally. Even the succulent blue lilies—a variety of the agapanthus which is so familiar to us in English greenhouses—hung their long... more...

CHAPTER ITHE EXODUS “Do you know, Peggy Raymond, that you haven’t made a remark for three-quarters of an hour, unless somebody asked you a question?–and, even then, your answers didn’t fit.” It was mid-June, and as happens not unfrequently in the month acknowledging allegiance to both seasons, spring had plunged headlong into summer, with no preparatory gradations from breezy coolness to... more...

CHAPTER I "In the mud and scum of thingsSomething always always sings!" "MY, but it's nice an' cold this mornin'! The thermometer's done fell up to zero!" Mrs. Wiggs made the statement as cheerfully as if her elbows were not sticking out through the boy's coat that she wore, or her teeth chattering in her head like a pair of castanets. But, then, Mrs. Wiggs was... more...

PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS March 1st, 1861, I started for Cleveland, Ohio, to enter the law office of Boardman & Ingersoll as a law student. I was in that city at the time of the inauguration of President Lincoln. After Sumpter was fired on I was anxious to enlist and go to the front with the “Cleveland Grays,” but trouble with my eyes induced me to postpone my enlistment. After the President... more...

MISTRESS NELL “And once Nell Gwyn, a frail young sprite,    Look’d kindly when I met her;I shook my head perhaps–but quite    Forgot to quite forget her.“ It was a merry time in merry old England; for King Charles II. was on the throne. Not that the wines were better or the ladies fairer in his day, but the renaissance of carelessness and good-living had set in. True Roundheads again... more...

CUBICLE THIRTEEN The new girl sat on the edge of her bed, and gazed round at the small domain which for the next three months would be the one spot in this strange new world of school that she could call her own. It was really quite a nice cubicle, some eight feet wide by ten feet long—just large enough to contain a small white-counterpaned bed, a dressing-table and chest of drawers combined, a small... more...

I. AFTER SCHOOL. "Our content is our best having."—Shakespeare. Nobody had ever told Marjorie that she was, as somebody says we all are, three people,—the Marjorie she knew herself, the Marjorie other people knew, and the Marjorie God knew. It was a "bother" sometimes to be the Marjorie she knew herself, and she had never guessed there was another Marjorie for... more...

CHAPTER FIRST Good managers are made from messenger boys, brakemen, wipers and telegraphers; just as brave admirals are produced in due time by planting a cadet in a naval school. From two branches of the service come the best equipped men in the railroad world—from the motive-power department and from the train service. This one came from the mechanical department, and he spent his official life... more...

THE MARCH ASSIZE. Something more than half a century ago, a person, in going along Holborn, might have seen, near the corner of one of the thoroughfares which diverge towards Russell Square, the respectable-looking shop of a glover and haberdasher named James Harvey, a man generally esteemed by his neighbors, and who was usually considered well to do in the world. Like many London tradesmen, Harvey was... more...

The year 1888, that of the Silver Wedding of the Prince and Princess of Wales, is also the 25th anniversary of the year when the Prince first began to appear in public life. It is, therefore, a fit time to present some record of events in which His Royal Highness has taken part, and of services rendered by him to the nation, during the past quarter of a century. The best and the least formal way of... more...