Classics Books

CHAPTER IA HUNTING PARTY IN THE YEAR 1666 Before we cross the Kiralyhago, let us cast a parting glance at Hungary. I will unroll before your eyes a scene, partly the result of an adverse fate, partly of a dark mystery, representing joy and also deep sorrow. An incident of a moment becomes the turning-point of a whole century. My soul is saddened by the images thus conjured up; the figures out of the... more...

Chapter I.—A Run Ashore. In the month of August, 1856, the bark Northampton was lying in the harbor of San Diego. In spite of the awning spread over her deck the heat was almost unbearable. Not a breath of wind was stirring in the land-locked harbor, and the bare and arid country round the town afforded no relief to the eye. The town itself looked mean and poverty-stricken, for it was of... more...

THE CASTLE OF VAUTSBERG ON THE RHINE. A chamber in a tower. PRINCE HENRY, sitting alone, ill and restless.  Prince Henry. I cannot sleep! my fervid brainCalls up the vanished Past again,And throws its misty splendors deepInto the pallid realms of sleep!A breath from that far-distant shoreComes freshening ever more and more,And wafts o'er intervening seasSweet odors from the Hesperides!A wind,... more...

CHAPTER I THE PURSUIT OF THE HUDSON BAY MAIL The deep hush of noon hovered over the vast solitude of Canadian forest. The moose and caribou had fed since early dawn, and were resting quietly in the warmth of the February sun; the lynx was curled away in his niche between the great rocks, waiting for the sun to sink farther into the north and west before resuming his marauding adventures; the fox was... more...

I When Hugh Seymour was nine years of age he was sent from Ceylon, where his parents lived, to be educated in England. His relations having, for the most part, settled in foreign countries, he spent his holidays as a very minute and pale-faced "paying guest" in various houses where other children were of more importance than he, or where children as a race were of no importance at all. It was... more...

CHAPTER I MYSELF "My house, my affairs, my ache and my religion—" I was fifty years old to-day. Half a century has hurried by since I first lay in my mother's wondering arms. To be sure, I am not old; but I can no longer deceive myself into believing that I am still young. After all, the illusion of youth is a mental habit consciously encouraged to defy and face down the reality of age.... more...

SPRINGSpring, the sweet Spring, is the year's pleasant king;Then blooms each thing, then maids dance in a ring,Cold doth not sting, the pretty birds do sing,Cuckoo, jug-jug, pu-we, to-witta-woo!The palm and may make country houses gay,Lambs frisk and play, the shepherds pipe all day,And we hear aye birds tune this merry lay,Cuckoo, jug-jug, pu-we, to-witta-woo.The fields breathe sweet, the daisies... more...

INTRODUCTION Early in the present year Mr. Thos. J. Wise discovered among the miscellaneous MSS. of Borrow a fragment which proved to be part of a version of Oehlenschläger’s Gold Horns.  His attention being drawn to the fact, hitherto unknown, that Borrow had translated this famous poem, he sought for, and presently found, a complete MS. of the poem, and from this copy the present text has been... more...

The Head-hunter It was hot in the cabin of the freighter Asiatic Dream. The heaviness of the tropical heat outside the ship penetrated through the steel and flaking paint of the deck to turn the cabin into an oven. Rick Brant and Don Scott, stripped to their shorts, were oblivious of the heat. They sat hunched over a three-dimensional chessboard, studying the complex moves of their newest hobby. Now... more...

Chapter 1 Small feckless clouds were hurried across the vast untroubled sky—shepherdless, futile, imponderable—and were torn to fragments on the fangs of the mountains, so ending their ephemeral adventures with nothing of their fugitive existence left but a few tears. It was cold in the Callow—a spinney of silver birches and larches that topped a round hill. A purple mist hinted of buds in the... more...