Classics Books

n the valley, with the sheltering hills now behind them, the bitterly cold wind drove at the sled with unchecked ferocity. Gusts of snow came with the wind, thick and dry, the separate particles of it stinging on contact. The dogs made slow progress through the deep drifts. Hager's smoldering irritation blazed into abrupt rage. From his position at the rear of the sled, he lashed out with the... more...

CHAPTER I When the accident happened, Cordova was singing the mad scene in Lucia for the last time in that season, and she had never sung it better. The Bride of Lammermoor is the greatest love-story ever written, and it was nothing short of desecration to make a libretto of it; but so far as the last act is concerned the opera certainly conveys the impression that the heroine is a raving lunatic. Only... more...

CHAPTER I A JUG OF WATER It was certainly not Caesar's fault. Caesar was as well-meaning a Dalmatian as ever scampered in the wake of a cantering horse. And if Mike in his headlong Irish fashion chose to regard the scamper as a gross personal insult, that was surely not a matter for which he could reasonably be held responsible. And yet it was upon the luckless Caesar that the wrath of the gods... more...

Paper and Printing Recipes.   How to Remove Common Writing Ink From Paper Without Injury to the Print. Common writing ink may be removed from paper without injury to the print by oxalic acid and lime, carefully washing it in water before restoring it to the volume.   To Render Pencil Notes Indelible. Pencil notes found in a book, or placed there as annotations, may be rendered indelible by washing... more...

CHAPTER I. Bayou Teche is the dividing line. On its left is the land of bayous, lakes, and swamps; on its right, the beautiful short-turfed prairies of Western Louisiana. The Vermilion River divides the vast prairie into the countries of Attakapas on the east and Opelousas on the west. On its west bank, at its head of navigation, lies the sorry little town of Vermilionville, near about which on the... more...

CHAPTER I. A CHANCE MEETING AT GENEVA. "By Jove! I may as well make an end of the thing right here to-night!" was the dejected conclusion of a long council of war over which Major Alan Hawke had presided, with the one straggling comfort of being its only member. All this long September afternoon he had dawdled away in feeding certain rapacious swans navigating gracefully around Rousseau's... more...

I. "Love, that old song, of which the world is never weary." It was one of those beautiful, lengthening days, when May was pressing back with both hands the shades of the morning and the evening; May in New York one hundred and twenty-one years ago, and yet the May of A.D. 1886,—the same clear air and wind, the same rarefied freshness, full of faint, passing aromas from the wet earth and the... more...

GEORGE WASHINGTON MCKINLEY JONES. Scratch! scratch! scratch! went Colonel Austin's pen over the smooth white sheets of paper, sheet after sheet. The dead heat of Tampa hung heavy within the tent; the buzz of the flies was most distressing; but the reports must be got off, and after them there were letters to be written to "the Boy and his Mother" up North, telling them—especially the... more...

CHAPTER IJACK HARDING GETS A JOB"Look here, boy, can you hold my horse a few minutes?" asked a gentleman, as he jumped from his carriage in one of the lower streets in New York. The boy addressed was apparently about twelve, with a bright face and laughing eyes, but dressed in clothes of coarse material. This was Jack Harding, who is to be our hero. "Yes, sir," said Jack, with alacrity,... more...

CHAPTER I LANCE LOVELACE When I first found employment with Lance Lovelace, a Texas cowman, I had not yet attained my majority, while he was over sixty. Though not a native of Texas, "Uncle Lance" was entitled to be classed among its pioneers, his parents having emigrated from Tennessee along with a party of Stephen F. Austin's colonists in 1821. The colony with which his people reached... more...