Classics Books

CHAPTER I THE GIRL The afternoon was intensely, terribly hot. Looked at from the high ground where they were encamped above the river, the sea, a mile or two to her right—for this was the coast of Pondo-land—to little Rachel Dove staring at it with sad eyes, seemed an illimitable sheet of stagnant oil. Yet there was no sun, for a grey haze hung like a veil beneath the arch of the sky, so dense and... more...

CHAPTER I It was a warm, grey, moist evening, typical Irish weather, and Miss Berknowles was curled up in a window-seat of the library reading a book. Kilgobbin Park lay outside with the rooks cawing in the trees, miles of park land across which the dusk was coming, blotting out all things from Arranakilty to the Slieve Bloom Mountains. The turf fire burning on the great hearth threw out a rich steady... more...

PRELUDE   Long, long ago when castles grim did frown,  When massy wall and gate did 'fend each town;  When mighty lords in armour bright were seen,  And stealthy outlaws lurked amid the green  And oft were hanged for poaching of the deer,  Or, gasping, died upon a hunting spear;  When barons bold did on their rights insist  And hanged or burned all rogues who dared resist;  When... more...

THE GERRARD STREET MYSTERY. I. My name is William Francis Furlong. My occupation is that of a commission merchant, and my place of business is on St. Paul Street, in the City of Montreal. I have resided in Montreal ever since shortly after my marriage, in 1862, to my cousin, Alice Playter, of Toronto. My name may not be familiar to the present generation of Torontonians, though I was born in Toronto,... more...

CHAPTER I On a certain forenoon in the month of April, 1758, there was unusual activity in the harbor of New York. In spite of the disagreeable weather--which had now already lasted two days, with dense fogs and drizzling rain, and even then, from low, gray clouds, was drenching the multitude--there stood upon the quay dense groups of people looking at a large Dutch three-master, which had already lain... more...

In the little town of Rodez, situated on the western side of the Cévennes and washed by the waters of the river Aveyron, there lived a lawyer by the name of Fualdes, a commonplace man, neither good nor bad. Notwithstanding his advanced age, he had only recently retired from affairs, and his finances were in such a bad shape that he was obliged, in the beginning of the year 1817, to dispose of his... more...

INTRODUCTION The correspondence of George Sand and Gustave Flaubert, if approached merely as a chapter in the biographies of these heroes of nineteenth century letters, is sufficiently rewarding. In a relationship extending over twelve years, including the trying period of the Franco-Prussian War and the Commune, these extraordinary personalities disclose the aspects of their diverse natures which are... more...

Chapter ITHE ROCKS AND THEIR STORYWalking along the sea shore, with all its varied interest, many must from time to time have had their attention attracted by the shells to be seen, not lying on the sands, or in the pools, but firmly embedded in the solid rock of the cliffs and of the rock ledges which run out on to the shore, and have, it may be, wondered sometimes how they got there. At almost any... more...

CHAPTER I. THE YOUNG MAN WHO CAME TO STAY There is a fertile stretch of flat lands in Indiana where unagrarian Eastern travellers, glancing from car-windows, shudder and return their eyes to interior upholstery, preferring even the swaying caparisons of a Pullman to the monotony without. The landscape lies interminably level: bleak in winter, a desolate plain of mud and snow; hot and dusty in summer,... more...

CHAPTER I. LAUNCHING OF MY LIFE-BOAT.   Wild was the night, yet a wilder night    Hung around o'er the mother's pillow;  In her bosom there waged a fiercer fight    Than the fight on the wrathful billow. Already there were more children than potatoes in her hut of logs, and yet, another unwelcome guest was coming, to whom fate had ordained that it would have been money in his... more...