Classics Books

Preface We were talking last evening—as the blue moon-mist poured in through the old-fashioned grated window, and mingled with our yellow lamplight at table—we were talking of a certain castle whose heir is initiated (as folk tell) on his twenty-first birthday to the knowledge of a secret so terrible as to overshadow his subsequent life. It struck us, discussing idly the various mysteries and... more...

CHAPTER I WILD GEESE Slow Dog, Medicine Man, looked out of his lodge. Wild geese were honking overhead. To the Indian it meant the return of spring. "I must be the first to kill one," muttered Slow Dog. Entering his lodge, he presently came out with bow and arrows. Hastening toward a bend in the river which formed a sheltered cove, he hid among a clump of willow bushes and waited in the hope... more...

Chapter One. The New Boy. “Hi! Blacky! Here—hold hard. D’you hear, Snowball?” The last peremptorily. He thus addressed, paused, turned, and eyed somewhat doubtfully, not without a tinge of apprehension, the group of boys who thus hailed him. “What’s your name?” pursued the latter, “Caesar, Pompey, Snowball—what?” “Or Uncle Tom?” came another suggestion. “I—new boy,” was... more...

CHAPTER I   "For in the days we know not of  Did fate begin  Weaving the web of days that wove  Your doom." SWINBURNE. ". . . allahu akbar—la ilaha—illa 'llah!" Across the golden glory of the sky floated the insistent call of the muezzin just as Damaris, followed closely by Wellington, her bulldog, turned out of the narrow street into the Khan el-Khalili. Shrill and... more...

SALLY CREIGHTON. The frost outside was bitter, and the prairie, which rolled back from Lander's in long undulations to the far horizon, gleamed white beneath the moon, but there was warmth and brightness in Stukely's wooden barn. It stood at one end of the little, desolate settlement, where the trail that came up from the railroad thirty miles away forked off into two wavy ribands that melted... more...

Chapter I. Highlanders of Northern Luzon.—Meaning of the word “Igorot.”—Trails.—The Mountain Province.—Nature of the country. It is to be regretted that the people of the United States should in general show so little interest in the Philippine Islands. This lack of interest may be due to lack of knowledge; if this be so, then it is the duty of those better informed to do all that lies in... more...

CHAPTER I A Momentous Decision It was exactly ten days before the opening of the autumn term at The Gables. The September sunshine, flooding through the window of the Principal's study, lighted up the bowl of carnations upon the writing-table, and, flashed back from the Chippendale mirror on the wall, caught the book-case with the morocco-bound editions of the poets, showed up the etching of... more...

I The Mail The ambiguous light of a December morning, peeping through the windows of the Holyhead mail, dispelled the soft visions of the four insides, who had slept, or seemed to sleep, through the first seventy miles of the road, with as much comfort as may be supposed consistent with the jolting of the vehicle, and an occasional admonition to remember the coachman, thundered through the open door,... more...

PREFACE The present selection of Hazlitt’s critical essays has been planned to serve two important purposes. In the first place it provides the materials for an estimate of the character and scope of Hazlitt’s contributions to criticism and so acquaints students with one of the greatest of English critics. And in the second place, what is perhaps more important, such a selection, embodying a series... more...

It was a bland, sunny morning of a mediæval May,—an old-style May of the most typical quality; and the Council of the little town of St. Radegonde were assembled, as was their wont at that hour, in the picturesque upper chamber of the Hôtel de Ville, for the dispatch of the usual municipal business. Though the date was early sixteenth century, [p 2] the members of this particular town-council... more...