Classics Books

INTRODUCTION When Mary Elizabeth Hall first brought her discovery to my attention, I thought that it was indeed one that would revolutionize candy-making, both that of the amateur at home and of the manufacturer. And, in the months that have followed, to this belief has been added the conviction that this revolution is one very much worth while. Why so simple and obvious a discovery was not made long... more...

"LADY DAISY."A DOLL STORY. Little Flora's father gave her a small china doll on her fourth birthday. It was only a little one, but Flora's father said that his little girl was very small too, and he thought she could not carry a big doll yet. When Flora was five years old her father gave her a larger one, and when she was six her father presented her with a beautiful baby doll in long... more...

SPECIAL INTRODUCTION. The region which extends from the frontiers of Egypt to the Atlantic Ocean, and from the Mediterranean to the Niger, was in ancient times inhabited by a people to whom we give the general name of Berbers, but whom the ancients, particularly those of the Eastern portion, knew under the name of Moors. "They were called Maurisi by the Greeks," said Strabo, "in the first... more...

I. THE SUPPOSED OPPOSITION OF SCIENCE AND RELIGION. A common impression prevails that there is serious, if not invincible, opposition between science and religion. This persuasion has been minimized to a great degree in recent years, and yet sufficient of it remains to make a great many people think that, if there is not entire incompatibility between science and religion, there is at least such a... more...

INITIAL CHAPTER —SHOWING HOW MY NOVEL CAME TO BE WRITTEN. Scene, the hall in UNCLE ROLAND'S tower; time, night; season, winter. MR. CAXTON is seated before a great geographical globe, which he is turning round leisurely, and "for his own recreation," as, according to Sir Thomas Browne, a philosopher should turn round the orb of which that globe professes to be the representation and... more...

At the end of the ’eighties my father and mother, my brother and sisters and myself, all newly arrived from Dublin, were settled in Bedford Park in a red-brick house with several mantelpieces of wood, copied from marble mantelpieces designed by the brothers Adam, a balcony and a little garden shadowed by a great horse-chestnut tree. Years before we had lived there, when the crooked ostentatiously... more...

BATTLE OF SPOTTSYLVANIA—HANCOCK'S POSITION—ASSAULT OF WARREN'S AND WRIGHT'S CORPS—UPTON PROMOTED ON THE FIELD—GOOD NEWS FROM BUTLER AND SHERIDAN. The Mattapony River is formed by the junction of the Mat, the Ta, the Po and the Ny rivers, the last being the northernmost of the four. It takes its rise about a mile south and a little east of the Wilderness Tavern. The Po rises... more...

That's what we always called them, where I come from, huddlers. Damnedest thing to see from any distance, the way they huddle. They had one place, encrusting the shore line for miles on one of the land bodies they called the Eastern Seaboard. A coagulation in this crust contained eight million of the creatures, eight million. They called it New York, and it was bigger than most of the others, but... more...

I. THE SERGEANT OF THE GUARDS. My father, Andrew Peter Grineff, having served in his youth under Count Munich, left the army in 17—, with the grade of First Major. From that time he lived on his estate in the Principality of Simbirsk, where he married Avoditia, daughter of a poor noble in the neighborhood. Of nine children, the issue of this marriage, I was the only survivor. My brothers and sisters... more...

THE NURNBERG STOVE August lived in a little town called Hall. Hall is a favorite name for several towns in Austria and in Germany; but this one especial little Hall, in the Upper Innthal, is one of the most charming Old-World places that I know, and August, for his part, did not know any other. It has the green meadows and the great mountains all about it, and the gray-green glacier-fed water rushes by... more...