Classics Books

THE MOUNTAINS WASHINGTON GLADDEN '59   O, proudly rise the monarchs of our mountain land,    With their kingly forest robes, to the sky,  Where Alma Mater dwelleth with her chosen band,    Where the peaceful river floweth gently by.       Chorus.  The mountains! the mountains! we greet them with a song!  Whose echoes, rebounding their woodland heights along,  Shall mingle... more...

APPENDIX I. It seems impossible to separate by any exact line the genuine writings of Plato from the spurious. The only external evidence to them which is of much value is that of Aristotle; for the Alexandrian catalogues of a century later include manifest forgeries. Even the value of the Aristotelian authority is a good deal impaired by the uncertainty concerning the date and authorship of the... more...

Not the dark companion of Sirius, brightest of all stars—not our own chill and spectral planet rushing toward Vega in the constellation of Lyra—presided at the birth of millions born to corroborate a bloody horoscope. But a Dark Star, speeding unseen through space, known to the ancients, by them called Erlik, after the Prince of Darkness, ruled at the birth of those myriad souls destined to be... more...

HENRY CLAY. The close of the war removes the period preceding it to a great distance from us, so that we can judge its public men as though we were the "posterity" to whom they sometimes appealed. James Buchanan still haunts the neighborhood of Lancaster, a living man, giving and receiving dinners, paying his taxes, and taking his accustomed exercise; but as an historical figure he is as... more...

CHAPTER I One day, in the November following William Wetherell's death, Jethro Bass astonished Coniston by moving to the little cottage in the village which stood beside the disused tannery, and which had been his father's. It was known as the tannery house. His reasons for this step, when at length discovered, were generally commended: they were, in fact, a disinclination to leave a girl of... more...

On the 18th of June, 1863, it having been definitely ascertained that the rebel horde had invaded Pennsylvania in force, the call of the President was issued to the Empire State, and her militia, leaving everything as it stood—their books unclosed, their ploughs in the furrow—hurried eagerly forward in response, to unite in the defence of our sister State. All day long blue and gray uniforms were... more...

CHAPTER FIRST. THE LANDSCAPE OF THE STORY. I see old Sylvester Peabody—the head of the Peabody family—seated in the porch of his country dwelling, like an ancient patriarch, in the calm of the morning. His broad-brimmed hat lies on the bench at his side, and his venerable white locks flow down his shoulders, which time in one hundred seasons of battle and sorrow, of harvest and drouth, of toil and... more...

CHAPTER I A STORY AND A VISIT At the beginning of the month of September, 1916, there appeared in the Cornhill Magazine a story entitled "The Lost Naval Papers." I had told this story at second hand, for the incidents had not occurred within my personal experience. One of the principals—to whom I had allotted the temporary name of Richard Cary—was an intimate friend,... more...

TURNING THE BIBLE The place of the beginning of this story was a country neighborhood on a shore, if one may call it so, that divided a forest and prairie in Central Illinois. The date was nearly a lifetime ago. An orange-colored sun going down behind the thrifty orchard of young apple-trees on John Albaugh's farm, put into shadow the front of a dwelling which had stood in wind and weather long... more...

I "YORK FACTORY, HUDSON'S BAY,"23rd September, 1747. "MY DEAR COUSIN FANNY,—It was a year last April Fool's Day, I left you on the sands there at Mablethorpe, no more than a stone's throw from the Book-in-Hand Inn, swearing that you should never see me or hear from me again. You remember how we saw the coast-guards flash their lights here and there, as they searched the... more...