Classics Books

I. THE PARIS-VENTIMIGLIA EXPRESSMARSEILLES!The fast Paris-Ventimiglia train, one of the Grand European Expresses, had stopped a moment at Marseilles. It was about seven in the morning of a winter day. The huge cars, with their bevelled-glass windows, dripped water from all parts; the locomotive puffed, resting from its run, and the bellows between car and car, like great accordeons, had black drops... more...

INCIDENT AT RESACA DE LA PALMA. Sergeant Milton gives the following account of an incident which befel him at the Battle of Resaca de la Palma. "At Palo Alto," says he, "I took my rank in the troop as second sergeant, and while upon the field my horse was wounded in the jaw by a grape-shot, which disabled him for service. While he was plunging in agony I dismounted, and the quick eye of... more...

INTRODUCTION Life was formerly regarded as a phenomenon entirely separated from the other phenomena of Nature, and even up to the present time Science has proved wholly unable to give a definition of Life; evolution, nutrition, sensibility, growth, organization, none of these, not even the faculty of reproduction, is the exclusive appanage of life. Living things are made of the same chemical elements... more...

Foreword       Anyone who examinesthe Zen arts is immediately struck by how modern they seem. Many of the most famous stone gardens are abstract expressionism pure and simple, created out of found objects. The ceramics of the sixteenth-century Zen artists could be interchanged with the rugged pots of our own contemporary crafts movement and few people would notice a difference. Ancient Zen... more...

The eastern pipistrelle, Pipistrellus subflavus (Cuvier) in the western part of its range, occurs along the Río Grande and its tributaries as far west as northern Coahuila and Val Verde County, Texas. Specimens from those places represent a heretofore undescribed subspecies which may be named and described as follows: Type.—Female, adult, skin and skull; No. 48270, Univ. Kansas Mus. Nat. Hist.;... more...

CHAPTER I MARJORIE'S HOME In the Maynards' side yard at Rockwell, a swingful of children was slowly swaying back and forth. The swing was one of those big double wooden affairs that hold four people, so the Maynards just filled it comfortably. It was a lovely soft summer day in the very beginning of June; the kind of day that makes anybody feel happy but a little bit subdued. The kind of day... more...

My Dear Elena, We had a conversation once, walking on your terrace, with the wind-rippled olives above and the quietly nodding cypress tufts below—about such writings as you chose to compare with carved cherry-stones. We disagreed, for it seemed to me that the world needed cherry-stone necklaces as much as anything else; and that the only pity was that most of its inhabitants could not afford such... more...

INTRODUCTION "The Prairie" was the third in order of Fenimore Cooper's Leatherstocking Tales. Its first appearance was in the year 1827. The idea of the story had suggested itself to him, we are told, before he had finished its immediate forerunner, "The Last of the Mohicans." He chose entirely new scenes for it, "resolved to cross the Mississippi and wander over the desolate... more...

CHAPTER I "Drusilla Doane, O Drusilla Doane!" came waveringly around the corner; and the quavering voice was followed by a little old woman who peered at the line of old ladies sitting in the sun. "Is Drusilla Doane here?" she inquired, darting quick birdlike glances from her old eyes at the curious faces that looked up at her approach. A little white-haired woman stopped the darning of... more...

MY DEAR FRIEND: I have often declared that I never would write prefaces! But how can one resist a fine fellow who brings one an attractive manuscript, signed with a name popular among all his friends, who asks of one, in the most engaging way, an opinion on the same—then a word, a simple word of introduction, like a signal to saddle? I have read your Zibeline, my dear friend, and this romance—your... more...