Classics Books

CHAPTER I.NEWSPAPER PEOPLE. What would the Englishman do without his newspaper I cannot imagine.  The sun might just as well refuse to shine, as the press refuse to turn out its myriads of newspapers.  Conversation would cease at once.  Brown, with his morning paper in his hand, has very decided opinions indeed,—can tell you what the French Emperor is about,—what the Pope will be compelled to... more...

Chapter One. Book I—The Transvaal Emissary. The delegate from Pretoria was in full blast. The long room was packed full—full of male Boers of all ages: that is to say, from those in earliest manhood to the white-bearded great-grandfathers of the community—Boers of every type, Boers hairy, Boers shaven, moleskin-clad and collarless Boers, and Boers got up with near approach to European neatness;... more...

ALEXANDER CRUMMELLAN APOSTLE OF NEGRO CULTURE. A noted English lawyer-author has declared that the twelfth chapter of Ecclesiastes is the final word of the world’s philosophy; that no ancient or modern thinker has uttered a profounder word. And in the seventh verse of that chapter it reads, “Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was; and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it.”... more...

I Jean Servien was born in a back-shop in the Rue Notre-Dame des Champs. His father was a bookbinder and worked for the Religious Houses. Jean was a little weakling child, and his mother nursed him at her breast as she sewed the books, sheet by sheet, with the curved needle of the trade. One day as she was crossing the shop, humming a song, in the words of which she found expression for the vague,... more...

ABRAHAM LINCOLN Two Chroniclers: The two speaking together: Kinsmen, you shall behold Our stage, in mimic action, mould A man's character. This is the wonder, always, everywhere—Not that vast mutability which is event,The pits and pinnacles of change,But man's desire and valiance that rangeAll circumstance, and come to port unspent. Agents are these events, these ecstasies,And tribulations,... more...

CHAPTER I. "Any news to-night?" asked Admiral Buzza, leading a trump. "Hush, my love," interposed his wife timidly, with a glance at the Vicar. She liked to sit at her husband's left, and laid her small cards before him as so many tributes to his greatness. "I will not hush, Emily. I repeat, is there any news to-night?" Miss Limpenny, his hostess and vis-a-vis, finding the... more...

CHAPTER I Abraham Lincoln knew little concerning his progenitors, and rested well content with the scantiness of his knowledge. The character and condition of his father, of whom alone upon that side of the house he had personal cognizance, did not encourage him to pry into the obscurity behind that luckless rover. He was sensitive on the subject; and when he was applied to for information, a brief... more...

The space ship landed briefly, and John Endlich lifted the huge Asteroids Homesteaders Office box, which contained everything from a prefabricated house to toothbrushes for his family, down from the hold-port without help or visible effort. In the tiny gravity of the asteroid, Vesta, doing this was no trouble at all. But beyond this point the situation was—bitter. His two kids, Bubs, seven, and... more...

CHAPTER I During the spring and summer of 1861 the people of the North presented the appearance of a great political unit. All alleged emphatically that the question was simply of the Union, and upon this issue no Northerner could safely differ from his neighbors. Only a few of the more cross-grained ones among the Abolitionists were contemptuously allowed to publish the selfishness of their morality,... more...

I WALKING PAPERS Through the suave, warm radiance of that afternoon of Spring in England a gentleman of modest and commonly amiable deportment bore a rueful countenance down Piccadilly and into Halfmoon street, where presently he introduced it to one whom he found awaiting him in his lodgings, much at ease in his easiest chair, making free with his whiskey and tobacco, and reading a slender brown... more...