Classics Books

CHAPTER I Between two flames the man stood, overlooking the crowd. A soft breeze, playing about the torches, sent shadows billowing across the massed folk on the ground. Shrewdly set with an eye to theatrical effect, these phares of a night threw out from the darkness the square bulk of the man's figure, and, reflecting garishly upward from the naked hemlock of the platform, accentuated, as in... more...

CHAPTER 1.Previous Expeditions into the Interior.Attempts to discover a Route between South and Western Australia.Eyre's Disastrous Journey.Leichardt, the Lost Explorer.The Latest Explorations.As the history of the principal expeditions into the interior of Australia has been narrated by several able writers, I do not propose to repeat what has already been so well told. But, to make the narrative... more...

SCENE.—Outskirts of Peking. L. View of town gate, above which are reared long poles, bearing turbaned and shorn heads, symmetrically disposed so as to form a kind of architectural ornament. R. Small suburban dwellings, from one of which issues PRINCE KALAF, dressed in a fantastic Tartar warrior's costume. KALAF. The Gods be thanked, at last by patient seeking,I've found a lodging in this... more...

No undue liberties with history have been attempted in this romance. Few characters in the story are purely imaginary. Doubtless the fastidious reader will distinguish these intruders at a glance, and very properly ignore them. For they, and what they never were, and what they never did, merely sugar-coat a dose disguised, and gild the solid pill of fact with tinselled fiction. But from the flames of... more...

CHAPTER I. Charles Thompson, born in Atala County, Mississippi—Division of Kirkwood's Slaves Among his Six Children—The Writer and his Two Sisters Fall to Mrs. Wilson—The Parting Between Mother and Child—Deprived of a Fond Mother Forever—Old Uncle Jack—Wilson Buys Uncle Ben from Strucker—Uncle Ben Runs Away and is Hunted with Blood-Hounds—Two Hundred Dollars Reward. I was a slave,... more...

So far as my literary work is concerned 'Pierre and His People' may be likened to a new city built upon the ashes of an old one. Let me explain. While I was in Australia I began a series of short stories and sketches of life in Canada which I called 'Pike Pole Sketches on the Madawaska'. A very few of them were published in Australia, and I brought with me to England in 1889 about... more...

CHAPTER I.THE TRAPPER'S ART. During past ages many of the wild creatures of the forest and stream were hunted and captured in various ways by the inhabitants of the wilderness,--the flesh of these animals being the principal food of many tribes of savages and the skins being used for clothing; but it was only after furs became a staple article of wearing apparel among civilized nations and the... more...

The first mention of bats in Nebraska possibly was by Harrison Allen, in his "Monograph of the Bats of North America" (1864:14, 20, 30, 35, 42), who listed Nycticejus crepuscularis [= Nycticeius humeralis], Lasiurus borealis, Scotophilus carolinensis and Scotophilus fuscus [both = Eptesicus fuscus], and Scotophilus noctivagans [= Lasionycteris noctivagans], as collected in... more...

IT Prana Beach would be a part of the solid west coast if it wasn't for a half circle of the deadliest, double-damned, orchid-haunted black morass, with a solid wall of insects that bite, rising out of it. But the beach is good dry sand, and the wind keeps the bugs back in the swamp. Between the beach and the swamp is a strip of loam and jungle, where some niggers live and a god. I landed on Prana... more...

MONSIEUR DE GUISE'S LATIN. On Monday, the 18th of August, 1572, there was a splendid festival at the Louvre. The ordinarily gloomy windows of the ancient royal residence were brilliantly lighted, and the squares and streets adjacent, usually so solitary after Saint Germain l'Auxerrois had struck the hour of nine, were crowded with people, although it was past midnight. The vast, threatening,... more...