Classics Books

itting at his desk, Colonel Halter brought the images on the telescreen into focus. Four booster tugs were fastening, like sky-barnacles, onto the hull of the ancient derelict, Alpha. He watched as they swung her around, stern down, and sank with her through the blackness, toward the bluish-white, moon-lighted arc of Earth a thousand miles below. He pressed a button. The image of tugs and hull faded... more...

Much has been written by critics, especially by those in Germany (the native land of criticism), upon the important question, whether to please or to instruct should be the end of Fiction—whether a moral purpose is or is not in harmony with the undidactic spirit perceptible in the higher works of the imagination. And the general result of the discussion has been in favour of those who have contended... more...

CHAPTER I. "If you please, marm, the man from York State is comin' afoot. Too stingy to ride, I'll warrant," and Janet, the housekeeper, disappeared from the parlor, just as the sound of the gate was heard, and an unusually fine-looking middle-aged man was seen coming up the box-lined walk which led to the cottage door. The person thus addressed was a lady, whose face, though young... more...

CHAPTER I. HISTORIC NOTICES OF VOLCANIC ACTION. There are no manifestations of the forces of Nature more calculated to inspire us with feelings of awe and admiration than volcanic eruptions preceded or accompanied, as they generally are, by earthquake shocks. Few agents have been so destructive in their effects; and to the real dangers which follow such terrestrial convulsions are to be added the... more...

Something about a Letter. “He mustn’t have so much corn, Joseph,” said Mr Tiddson, parish doctor of Croppley Magna, addressing a grinning boy of sixteen, who, with his smock-frock rolled up and twisted round his waist, was holding the bridle of a very thin, dejected-looking pony, whose mane and tail seemed to have gone to the cushion-maker’s, leaving in their places a few strands that had... more...

CHAPTER I THE KING'S PLEASAUNCE "In the beginning," so we are told, "God made the heavens and the earth." The statement is simple and terse; it is evidently intended to be wholly comprehensive. Its decisive, almost abrupt tone would seem to forbid either question or argument. The old-world narrator of the sublime event thus briefly chronicled was a poet of no mean quality, though... more...

Part I The tradesmen of Bridgepoint learned to dread the sound of "MissMathilda", for with that name the good Anna always conquered. The strictest of the one price stores found that they could givethings for a little less, when the good Anna had fully said that "MissMathilda" could not pay so much and that she could buy it cheaper "byLindheims." Lindheims was Anna's... more...

§1 The motor-car entered a little white gate, came to a porch under a thick wig of jasmine, and stopped. The chauffeur indicated by a movement of the head that this at last was it. A tall young woman with a big soft mouth, great masses of blue-black hair on either side of a broad, low forehead, and eyes of so dark a brown you might have thought them black, drooped forward and surveyed the house with a... more...

UNCLE BURT'S BILLY My name is William Ainsworth Gordon, and my initials spell W.A.G. That is why Aunty May and I call this book "W.A.G.'S TALE." If it was about a dog it would be "Tail Wags." So it's true and a joke too. I am ten years old and my father and mother are in Heaven, and I have only Uncle Burt to take care of me. Uncle Burt isn't my real uncle, but he was... more...

Judges 1:1 It happened after the death of Joshua, the children of Israel asked of Yahweh, saying, Who shall go up for us first against the Canaanites, to fight against them? 1:2 Yahweh said, Judah shall go up: behold, I have delivered the land into his hand. 1:3 Judah said to Simeon his brother, Come up with me into my lot, that we may fight against the Canaanites; and I likewise will go with you into... more...