Classics Books

THE HOMESTEAD AND THE RACE The coast line of the south of Norway is very irregular. This is the work of the mountains and rivers. The former end in hillocks and headlands, off which often lie islands; the latter have dug out valleys and end in fjords or smaller inlets. In one of these inlets, known as "Kroken" (the nook), lies the homestead. The original name of the place was Krokskogen. In the... more...

HEADSTRONG AND HEADLONG Far from any house or hut, in the depth of dreary moor-land, a road, unfenced and almost unformed, descends to a rapid river. The crossing is called the "Seven Corpse Ford," because a large party of farmers, riding homeward from Middleton, banded together and perhaps well primed through fear of a famous highwayman, came down to this place on a foggy evening, after heavy... more...

THE BROKEN DOLL Mary Jane stood on the curbstone and stared into the middle of the street. Her face was white with fright and the tears which had not as yet come were close to her big blue eyes. Her little fists were clinched and even her perky plaid hair ribbon seemed to show amazement. And wasn't it enough to make any little girl stare? Her big, beautiful doll, the one that came at Christmas... more...

CHAPTER I I AM BORN The sun was slowly setting in the west, casting golden beams of light into the somber old room. That's the way it ought to begin, I know, and I'd like to do it, but I can't. I'm beginning with my being born, of course, and Nurse Sarah says the sun wasn't shining at all. It was night and the stars were out. She remembers particularly about the stars, for... more...

CHAPTER I THE SHOP It was an evening early in May. The sun was low, and the street was mottled with the shadows of its paving-stones—smooth enough, but far from evenly set. The sky was clear, except for a few clouds in the west, hardly visible in the dazzle of the huge light, which lay among them like a liquid that had broken its vessel, and was pouring over the fragments. The street was almost... more...

MARY MINDS HER BUSINESS So that you may understand my heroine, I am going to write a preface and tell you about her forebears. In the latter part of the seventeenth century, there was a young blacksmith in our part of the country named Josiah Spencer. He had a quick eye, a quick hand and a quicker temper. Because of his quick eye he married a girl named Mary McMillan. Because of his quick hand, he was... more...

The curtain of the big bed hung down beside the cot. When old Jenny shook it the wooden rings rattled on the pole and grey men with pointed heads and squat, bulging bodies came out of the folds on to the flat green ground. If you looked at them they turned into squab faces smeared with green. Every night, when Jenny had gone away with the doll and the donkey, you hunched up the blanket and the stiff... more...

INTRODUCTION In the Valhalla of English literature Anne Manning is sure of a little and safe place. Her studies of great men, in which her imagination fills in the hiatus which history has left, are not only literature in themselves, but they are a service to literature: it is quite conceivable that the ordinary reader with no very keen flair for poetry will realise John Milton and appraise him more... more...

CHAPTER I THE CIRCASSIAN GRAND Miss Lucile Wollaston was set to exude sympathy, like an aphid waiting for an overworked ant to come down to breakfast. But there was no sympathizing with the man who came in from a doctor's all-night vigil like a boy from a ball-game, gave her a hard brisk kiss on the cheek-bone, and then, before taking his place at the table, unfolded the morning paper for a glance... more...

CHAPTER I On the twentieth day of April in the year 19—, the people—that is, a majority of the grown people of Ostable—were talking of Marcellus Hall and Mary-'Gusta. A part of this statement is not surprising. The average person, no matter how humble or obscure, is pretty certain to be talked about on the day of his funeral, and Marcellus was to be buried that afternoon. Moreover, Marcellus... more...