Classics Books

Little Bewildered Henry   "Oh, mamma! mamma! where is you, mamma?" sobbed little Henry, a sweet child of three years old, as he stood in the lawn, opposite the door, with the wind blowing his pretty hair and clothes all about him: "Oh, mamma! mamma! where is you? I don't know where is you, my own mamma." "What are you crying for?" said Bill Boldface, a naughty boy in the... more...

CHAPTER I. THE MAN. (Mainly concerning the early life of John Robin Ross-Ellison.) Truth is stranger than fiction, and many of the coincidences of real life are truly stranger than the most daring imaginings of the fictionist. Now, I, Major Michael Malet-Marsac, happened at the moment to be thinking of my dear and deeply lamented friend John Ross-Ellison, and to be pondering, for the thousandth time,... more...

CHAPTER I. RACHEL FROST. The slanting rays of the afternoon sun, drawing towards the horizon, fell on a fair scene of country life; flickering through the young foliage of the oak and lime trees, touching the budding hedges, resting on the growing grass, all so lovely in their early green, and lighting up with flashes of yellow fire the windows of the fine mansion, that, rising on a gentle eminence,... more...

Whenever she and Lydia had a scene Miss Bennett thought of the first scene she had witnessed in the Thorne household. She saw before her a vermillion carpet on a mottled marble stair between high, polished-marble walls. There was gilt in the railing, and tall lanky palms stood about in majolica pots. Up this stairway an angry man was carrying an angrier child. Miss Bennett could see that broad back in... more...

MEMOIR. * * * * * Experience has, especially of late years, amply refuted the barbarous error, which attributes to Nature a niggardliness towards the minds of that sex to which she has been most prodigal of personal gifts; the highest walks of science and literature in this country have been graced by female authors, and, perhaps, the purity and refinement which pervade our works of imagination,... more...

THE IMMEDIATE JEWEL BY MARGARET DELAND    "Good name, in man and woman, dear my lord,    Is the immediate jewel of their souls."                                —Othello. I When James Graham, carpenter, enlisted, it was with the assurance that if he lost his life his grateful country would provide for his widow. He did lose it, and Mrs. Graham received, in... more...

CHAPTER I "These narrow, cramped streets torture me! I must get out of this place or I shall go mad. The country, with its rolling fields and great stretches of calm sky helps a little, but nothing except the ocean will satisfy my spirit. Five years have gone now, and I am still penned up in this miserable hole, with no power to go abroad, save for a cruise up the Channel, or a run south along the... more...

PREFACE. The unexpectedly favorable reception of the poetical compilation entitled "Child Life" has induced its publishers to call for the preparation of a companion volume of prose stories and sketches, gathered, like the former, from the literature of widely separated nationalities and periods. Illness, preoccupation, and the inertia of unelastic years would have deterred me from the... more...

CHAPTER I FIVE MILES OUT The four Lanes—Max, Sally, Alec and Robert—climbed the five flights of stairs to their small flat with the agility of youth and the impetus of high but subdued excitement. Uncle Timothy Rudd, following more slowly, reached the outer door of the little suite of rooms in time to hear what seemed to be the first outburst. "Well, what do you think now?" "Forty-two... more...

I 1 Barbara wished she would come back. For the last hour Fanny Waddington had kept on passing in and out of the room through the open door into the garden, bringing in tulips, white, pink, and red tulips, for the flowered Lowestoft bowls, hovering over them, caressing them with her delicate butterfly fingers, humming some sort of song to herself. The song mixes itself up with the Stores list Barbara... more...