Classics Books

CHAPTER XV. THE CRUISE OF THE WATERWITCH. The middle of August is come at last; and with it the solemn day on which Frederick Viscount Scoutbush may be expected to revisit the home of his ancestors. Elsley has gradually made up his mind to the inevitable, with a stately sulkiness: and comforts himself, as the time draws near, with the thought that, after all, his brother-in-law is not a very formidable... more...

CHAPTER IWHAT WILL BECOME OF ME? A London dining-room was lighted with gas, which showed a table of small dimensions, with a vase of somewhat dirty and dilapidated grasses in the centre, and at one end a soup tureen, from which a gentleman had helped himself and a young girl of about thirteen, without much apparent consciousness of what he was about, being absorbed in a pile of papers, pamphlets, and... more...

CHAPTER I If you are one of the favored few, privileged to ride in chaises, you may find the combination of Broadway during the evening rush-hour, in a late November storm, stimulating—you may, that is, provided you have a reliable driver. If, contrariwise, you happen to be of the class whose fate it is to travel in public conveyances (and lucky if you have the price!) and the car, say, won't... more...

MILL'S LOGIC. These are not degenerate days. We have still strong thinkers amongst us; men of untiring perseverance, who flinch before no difficulties, who never hide the knot which their readers are only too willing that they should let alone; men who dare write what the ninety-nine out of every hundred will pronounce a dry book; who pledge themselves, not to the public, but to their subject, and... more...

CHAPTER I Mrs. Ussher was having a small house party in the country over New Year's Day. This is equivalent to saying that the half dozen most fashionable people in New York were out of town. Certain human beings are admitted to have a genius for discrimination in such matters as objects of art, pigs or stocks. Mrs. Ussher had this same instinct in regard to fashion, especially where fashions in... more...

CHAPTER I GREEN FIELDS AND PASTURES NEW The Imperial Limited lurched with a swing around the last hairpin curve of the Yale canyon. Ahead opened out a timbered valley,—narrow on its floor, flanked with bold mountains, but nevertheless a valley,—down which the rails lay straight and shining on an easy grade. The river that for a hundred miles had boiled and snarled parallel to the tracks, roaring... more...

CHAPTER I MY FIRST JOURNEY I was born in the year 1800, in the town of Newnham-on-Severn, in Gloucestershire. I am sure of the year, because my father always told me that I was born at the end of the century, in the year that they began to build the great house. The house has been finished now these many years. The red-brick wall, which shuts its garden from the road (and the Severn), is all covered... more...

CHAPTER I. Sympathise with me, indeed! Ah, no! Cast your sympathy on the chill waves of troubled waters; fling it on the oases of futurity; dash it against the rock of gossip; or, better still, allow it to remain within the false and faithless bosom of buried scorn. Such were a few remarks of Irene as she paced the beach of limited freedom, alone and unprotected. Sympathy can wound the breast of... more...

"ONE OF THOSE IMPOSSIBLE AMERICANS" "N'avez-vous pas—" she was bravely demanding of the clerk when she saw that the bulky American who was standing there helplessly dangling two flaming red silk stockings which a copiously coiffured young woman assured him were bien chic was edging nearer her. She was never so conscious of the truly American quality of her French as when a... more...

CHAPTER XI. THE CAUSES OF SECESSION. In preceding Chapters of this work, it has been briefly shown, that from the very hour in which the Republic of the United States was born, there have not been wanting, among its own citizens, those who hated it, and when they could not rule, were always ready to do what they could, by Conspiracy, Sedition, Mutiny, Nullification, Secession, or otherwise, to weaken... more...