Classics Books

CHAPTER I THE EAVESDROPPER Maria Angelina was eavesdropping. Not upon her sister Lucia and Paolo Tosti whom she had been assigned to chaperon by reading a book to herself in the adjoining room—no, they were safely busy with piano and violin, and she was heartily bored, anyway, with their inanities. Voices from another direction had pricked her to alertness. Maria Angelina was in the corner room of... more...

Heretofore papers which have been read before this Commandery have related to personal reminiscences of campaigns and battles, with all the interest which accompanies the personal element in such affairs. The preservation of these details is of great importance, not only for the special interest which attaches to them, but because they illustrate the larger actions and will be of value to future... more...

Gentlemen:— There is no need, I apprehend, that I should undertake to impress you with a sense either of the need or of the importance of our assemblage here to-day. The fact of your coming here is, of itself, the clearest evidence of your warm acquiescence in the summons to this meeting, and of your cordial interest in the objects which it purposes to consider. Nothing has surprised and gratified me... more...

CHAPTER I. A RECOLLECTION. Robert Falconer, school-boy, aged fourteen, thought he had never seen his father; that is, thought he had no recollection of having ever seen him. But the moment when my story begins, he had begun to doubt whether his belief in the matter was correct. And, as he went on thinking, he became more and more assured that he had seen his father somewhere about six years before, as... more...

CHAPTER I I was about to say that I had known the Celebrity from the time he wore kilts. But I see I shall have to amend that, because he was not a celebrity then, nor, indeed, did he achieve fame until some time after I had left New York for the West. In the old days, to my commonplace and unobserving mind, he gave no evidences of genius whatsoever. He never read me any of his manuscripts, which I can... more...

Chapter 1 They, with their driver, went down Ramkhamhaeng Road singularly in the scope of their thoughts but conditioned into repudiating their aloneness. It was an early Bangkok morning with a new day tripping over the corpse of the earlier one the way dogs on the Bangkok sidewalks were walked on. It was early in the relationship of the two passengers and this nascent association contained the complex... more...

IN EXILE I. Nicky Dyer and the schoolmistress sat upon the slope of a hill, one of a low range overlooking an arid Californian valley. These sunburnt slopes were traversed by many narrow footpaths, descending, ascending, winding among the tangle of poison-oak and wild-rose bushes, leading from the miners' cabins to the shaft-houses and tunnels of the mine which gave to the hills their only... more...

Preface. In this tale I have left the battlefields of history, and have written a story of adventure in Australia, in the early days when the bush rangers and the natives constituted a real and formidable danger to the settlers. I have done this, not with the intention of extending your knowledge, or even of pointing a moral, although the story is not without one; but simply for a change--a change both... more...

PART I "Oh, Pink! Mother can't lift you.... I would if I could.... Yes, I know I used to— "Molly, take the baby. Couldn't you amuse him, somehow? Perhaps, if you tried hard, you could keep him still. When he screams so, it seems to hit me—here. It makes it harder to breathe. He cried 'most all night. And if you could contrive to keep Pink, too— "What is it,... more...

CHAPTER ONE Miss Philura Rice tied her faded bonnet-strings under her faded chin with hands that trembled a little; then she leaned forward and gazed anxiously at the reflection which confronted her. A somewhat pinched and wistful face it was, with large, light-lashed blue eyes, arched over with a mere pretense at eyebrows. More than once in her twenties Miss Philura had ventured to eke out this scanty... more...