Classics Books

THE TWO TWILIGHTS THE THANKLESS MUSE The muses ring my bell and run away.I spy you, rogues, behind the evergreen:You, wild Thalia, romper in the hay;And you, Terpsichore, you long-legged quean.When I was young you used to come and stay,But, now that I grow older, 'tis well seenWhat tricks ye put upon me. Well-a-day!How many a summer evening have ye beenSitting about my door-step, fain to singAnd... more...

AT THE DEPOT Mr. Simeon Phinney emerged from the side door of his residence and paused a moment to light his pipe in the lee of the lilac bushes. Mr. Phinney was a man of various and sundry occupations, and his sign, nailed to the big silver-leaf in the front yard, enumerated a few of them. "Carpenter, Well Driver, Building Mover, Cranberry Bogs Seen to with Care and Dispatch, etc., etc.," so... more...

INTRODUCTION In this country inherited fortunes, or ancestral honors, have little effect on a man's reputation; but inherited disposition and early surroundings have much effect on his character. My father's ancestors were from New England. His father, Phineas Butler, came from Saybrook, Connecticut, where the Congregational Churches framed the Saybrook platform. His mother's people, the... more...

FOOD. (chunnah). In the north of India the chief food on which horses are fed is gram, the seed of one of the pea tribe of plants. It is a crop that ripens in the beginning of the summer, when it is harvested, and the grain thrashed out by driving cattle over it in a circle. The dry stalks, that are broken up into small pieces, are used for feeding cattle on, and are known as “missa bhoosa,” in... more...

CHAPTER I. "PIONEERS, O PIONEERS" If you had stood on the borders of Askatoon, a prairie town, on the pathway to the Rockies one late August day not many years ago, you would have heard a fresh young human voice singing into the morning, as its possessor looked, from a coat she was brushing, out over the "field of the cloth of gold," which your eye has already been invited to see. With... more...

THE CRYPTOGRAM The strenuous rush of the day of suddenly changed plans was over, and with Gardiner, the assistant professor of geology, to bid him God-speed, Ballard had got as far as the track platform gates of the Boston & Albany Station when Lassley's telegram, like a detaining hand stretched forth out of the invisible, brought him to a stand. He read it, with a little frown of perplexity... more...

I I was on a French steamer bound from Havre to New York, when I had a peculiar experience in the way of a shipwreck. On a dark and foggy night, when we were about three days out, our vessel collided with a derelict--a great, heavy, helpless mass, as dull and colorless as the darkness in which she was enveloped. We struck her almost head on, and her stump of a bowsprit was driven into our port bow with... more...

CHAPTER I The tiny, trivial touch of Destiny that caused the turn in Amarilly's fate-tide came one morning when, in her capacity as assistant to the scrub ladies at the Barlow Stock Theatre, she viewed for the first time the dress rehearsal of A Terrible Trial. Heretofore the patient little plodder had found in her occupation only the sordid satisfaction of drawing her wages, but now the... more...

I sit down to perform my promise of giving you an account of a visit made many years since to Abbotsford. I hope, however, that you do not expect much from me, for the travelling notes taken at the time are so scanty and vague, and my memory so extremely fallacious, that I fear I shall disappoint you with the meagreness and crudeness of my details. Late in the evening of August 29, 1817, I arrived at... more...

CHAPTER I. LAWYER AND CLIENT. Early one morning, in the spring of eighteen hundred and seventy-three, two young lawyers were seated in their private office. The firm name, painted in gilt letters upon the glass of the door, was DUDLEY & BLISS. Mortimer Dudley was the senior member, though not over thirty years old. Robert Bliss was two years younger. Mr. Dudley was sorting some papers and deftly... more...