Classics Books

lice McNearby was washing breakfast dishes and looking out the kitchen window at the November sky when she first spied Dobie. The way he was sneaking up to the house she knew he had killed something. She dried her hands on her apron and tried to put down the suspicion that gnawed at the edge of her mind as she went to the door. During the past month Dobie had killed a cat, a pheasant, two rabbits and a... more...

CHAPTER I.   "The changing guests, each in a different mood,     Sit at the road-side table and arise:     And every life among them in likewise  Is a soul's board set daily with new food.   "May not this ancient room thou sitt'st in dwell     In separate living souls for joy or pain?     Nay, all its corners may be painted plain  Where Heaven shows... more...

CHAPTER I. THE BOY IN THE STRAW HAT. "How's craps, Country?" "Shut up, Bart! he may hear you." "What if he does, ninny? I want him to. Say, Spinach!" "Do you suppose he's going to try and play football, Bart?" "Not he. He's looking for a rake. Thinks this is a hayfield, Wall." The speakers were lying on the turf back of the north goal on the campus... more...

CHAPTER I. FATHERLESS. t was an artist's studio, a poor, shabby little place, with a latticed window facing the north. There was nothing in the furnishing or arrangement of the room to suggest successful work, or even artistic taste. A few tarnished gold frames leaned against the gaudily-papered wall, and the only picture stood on the dilapidated easel in the middle of the floor, a small canvas of... more...

OAKMONT George Morton never could be certain when he first conceived the preposterous idea that Sylvia Planter ought to belong to him. The full realization, at any rate, came all at once, unexpectedly, destroying his dreary outlook, urging him to fantastic heights, and, for that matter, to rather curious depths. It was, altogether, a year of violent change. After a precarious survival of a rural... more...

CHAPTER ONE With the silence and immobility of a great reddish-tinted rock, Thor stood for many minutes looking out over his domain. He could not see far, for, like all grizzlies, his eyes were small and far apart, and his vision was bad. At a distance of a third or a half a mile he could make out a goat or a mountain sheep, but beyond that his world was a vast sun-filled or night-darkened mystery... more...

CHAPTER ITHE BEGINNING OF ITIf you would glimpse the savage which normally lies asleep, thank God, in most of us, you have only to do this thing of which I shall tell you, and from some safe sanctuary where leaden couriers may not bear prematurely the tidings of man's debasement, watch the world below. You may see civilization swing back with a snap to savagery and worse—because savagery... more...

CHAPTER I. Sarah and Angelina Grimké were born in Charleston, South Carolina; Sarah, Nov. 26, 1792; Angelina, Feb. 20, 1805. They were the daughters of the Hon. John Fauchereau Grimké, a colonel in the revolutionary war, and judge of the Supreme Court of South Carolina. His ancestors were German on the father's side, French on the mother's; the Fauchereau family having left France in... more...

DONKEY SKIN There was once upon a time a king who was so much beloved by his subjects that he thought himself the happiest monarch in the whole world, and he had everything his heart could desire. His palace was filled with the rarest of curiosities, and his garden with the sweetest flowers, while the marble stalls of his stables stood a row of milk-white Arabs, with big brown eyes. Strangers who had... more...

THE GREEN SATIN GOWN Who ever wore such a queer-looking thing? I wore it myself, dear, once upon a time; yes, I did! Perhaps you would like to hear about it, while you mend that tear in your muslin. Sit down, then, and let us be cosy. I was making a visit in Hillton once, when I was seventeen years old, just your age; staying with dear old Miss Persis Elderby, who is now dead. I have told you about... more...