Classics Books

_INTRODUCTORY NOTE Of the life of Aeschylus, the first of the three great masters of Greek tragedy, only a very meager outline has come down to us. He was born at Eleusis, near Athens, B. C. 525, the son of Euphorion. Before he was twenty-five he began to compete for the tragic prize, but did not win a victory for twelve years. He spent two periods of years in Sicily, where he died in 456, killed, it... more...

CHAPTER XV. The entrance of a servant, announcing a name which Harley, in the absorption of his gloomy revery, did not hear, was followed by that of a person on whom he lifted his eyes in the cold and haughty surprise with which a man much occupied greets and rebukes the intrusion of an unwelcome stranger. "It is so long since your Lordship has seen me," said the visitor, with mild dignity,... more...

"The Talented Mr. Ripley" is an Hitchcockian and blood-curdling study of the psychopath and his victims. At the centre of this masterpiece, set in the exquisitely decadent scapes of Italy, is a titanic encounter between Ripley, the aforementioned psychopath protagonist and young Greenleaf, a consummate narcissist. Ripley is a cartoonishly poor young adult whose overriding desire is to belong to... more...

I There are always two ways of looking at a thing, frequently there are six or seven; but two ways of looking at a London fog are quite enough. When it is thick and yellow in the streets and stings a man's throat and lungs as he breathes it, an awakening in the early morning is either an unearthly and grewsome, or a mysteriously enclosing, secluding, and comfortable thing. If one awakens in a... more...

CHAPTER I. ON THE OCEAN. "Have you decided to go?" inquired my friend. Before us on the table lay an illustrated booklet containing the prospectus of a cruise to the Mediterranean. Its contents had been under consideration for some days. "Yes," I answered, "I will write to-day to secure state room accommodations for our party. Nevertheless I am not quite sure that it is wise to take... more...

CHAPTER I SALEM AND THE HATHORNES: 1630-1800 The three earliest settlements on the New England coast were Plymouth, Boston, and Salem; but Boston soon proved its superior advantages to the two others, not only from its more capacious harbor, but also from the convenient waterway which the Charles River afforded to the interior of the Colony. We find that a number of English families, and among them the... more...

MUSLIN I The convent was situated on a hilltop, and through the green garden the white dresses of the schoolgirls fluttered like the snowy plumage of a hundred doves. Obeying a sudden impulse, a flock of little ones would race through a deluge of leaf-entangled rays towards a pet companion standing at the end of a gravel-walk examining the flower she has just picked, the sunlight glancing along her... more...

THE OLD SAILOR. Jack Mason had been to sea a great many times when I first knew him, and he has been a great many times since. He has sailed in a ship almost all over the world. Such a host of stories as he can tell! Why, I do believe if he could find little boys and girls to talk to, he would begin in the morning as soon as he had got through his breakfast, and do nothing but tell stories about what... more...

INTRODUCTION An old Scottish lady, four generations ago, used to say, ‘It is a great comfort to think that, at the Day of Judgment, we shall know the whole truth about the Gowrie Conspiracy at last.’  Since the author, as a child, read ‘The Tales of a Grandfather,’ and shared King Jamie’s disappointment when there was no pot of gold, but an armed man, in the turret, he had supposed that we... more...

CHAPTER ONE. Dorian Trent was going to town to buy himself a pair of shoes. He had some other errands to perform for himself and his mother, but the reason for his going to town was the imperative need of shoes. It was Friday afternoon. The coming Sunday he must appear decently shod, so his mother had told him, at the same time hinting at some other than the Sunday reason. He now had the money, three... more...