Classics Books

AbecedaryVolatility.AbatinaFickleness.AcaciaFriendship.Acacia, Rose or White    Elegance.Acacia, YellowSecret love.AcanthusThe fine arts. Artifice.AcaliaTemperance.Achillea MillefoliaWar.Aconite (Wolfsbane)Misanthropy.Aconite, CrowfootLustre.Adonis, FlosPainful recollections.African MarigoldVulgar minds.Agnus CastusColdness. Indifference.AgrimonyThankfulness. Gratitude. Almond (Common)Stupidity.... more...

CHAPTER I. THE RETURN OF MADELINETTE His Excellency the Governor—the English Governor of French Canada—was come to Pontiac, accompanied by a goodly retinue; by private secretary, military secretary, aide-de-camp, cabinet minister, and all that. He was making a tour of the Province, but it was obvious that he had gone out of his way to visit Pontiac, for there were disquieting rumours in the air... more...

A CHAPTER, Gratis and Explanatory. What is the use of a preface? Who wants a preface? Nay, more—what is a preface? Who can define it? That which it is most unlike is the mathematical myth called a point, which may be said to have neither length nor breadth, and consequently no existence; whereas a preface generally has extreme length, all the breadth the printer can give it, and an universal... more...

I. ON LANDSEER'S CHARACTER AS AN ARTIST. If the popularity of a painter were the measure of his artistic greatness, Sir Edwin Landseer's would be among the foremost of the world's great names. At the height of his career probably no other living painter was so familiar and so well beloved throughout the English-speaking world. There were many homes in England and America where his... more...

IF any of the readers of this book should have the chance to take a railroad ride over the vast region of the United States, from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean, from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico, they would see a wonderful display of cities and towns, of factories and farms, and a great multitude of men and women actively at work. They would behold, spread out on every side, one of the... more...

CHAPTER I. The spring has come again to the hills and valleys of our home. The day awakes, a breeze moves strongly through the forest, as if its task were to carry away the lingering night; the birds begin to twitter, and here and there an early lark utters his note. Among the pine-trees, with their fresh green needles, a whispering and rustling is heard. The sun has risen above the mountaintop, and... more...

THE EARLY CHRISTIAN CHANTS The first Christians sang hymns. The Saviour went to His passion with a song on His lips. Matthew and Mark agree that the last act of worship in the Upper Room was the singing of a hymn. “And when they had sung a hymn, they went out unto the Mount of Olives.” How we wish that the words of that hymn might have been preserved! Perhaps they have. Many Biblical scholars... more...

Part One The Land of the Blue Flower was not called by that name until the tall, strong, beautiful King Amor came down from his castle on the mountain crag and began to reign. Before that time it was called King Mordreth's Land, and as the first King Mordreth had been a fierce and cruel king this seemed a gloomy name. A few weeks before Amor was born, his weak, selfish boy-father—whose name was... more...

CHAPTER I Along the buffalo paths, from one salt-lick to another, a group of pioneers took a vagrant way through the dense cane-brakes. Never a wheel had then entered the deep forests of this western wilderness; the frontiersman and the packhorse were comrades. Dark, gloomy, with long, level summit-lines, a grim outlier of the mountain range, since known as the Cumberland, stretched from northeast to... more...

LOST AND FOUND It was light, but not yet day. The shadows of the night seemed to linger, to retreat with reluctance; and as they were beaten back by the sun, still far below the eastern curve of the earth and further blockaded by giant mountain ranges also to the eastward, the clinging, gray morning mists of early Fall came to replace them. In the pallid light, a-swim with vapor, objects loomed... more...