Classics Books

WILLIAM PENN'S TEXT The Algonquin chiefs are gathered in solemn conclave. They make a wild and striking and picturesque group. They are assembled under the wide-spreading branches of a giant elm, not far from the banks of the Delaware. It is easy to see that something altogether unusual is afoot. Ranging themselves in the form of a crescent, these men of scarred limbs and fierce visage fasten... more...

THE AMIN OF KALAA.Emerging from these gloomy caflons, and passing the Beni-Mansour, the village of Thasaerth (where razors and guns are made), Arzou (full of blacksmiths), and some other towns, we enter the Beni-Aidel, where numerous white villages, wreathed with ash trees, lie crouched like nests of eggs on the summits of the primary mountains, with the magnificent peaks of Atlas cut in sapphire upon... more...

POST-PRANDIAL WIT There is a sense, of course, in which everything from the pages of Mr. Punch might be regarded as coming into a collection entitled "After Dinner Stories." All good stories are really for telling after dinner. Somehow or other one seldom associates wit and humour with the breakfast table, although the celebrated breakfast parties of Rogers, the banker, were doubtless in no way... more...

CHAPTER I. ANTECEDENTS OF THE REVOLUTION. During the last half of the second century before Christ Rome was undisputed mistress of the civilised world. A brilliant period of foreign conquest had succeeded the 300 years in which she had overcome her neighbours and made herself supreme in Italy. In 146 B.C. she had given the death-blow to her greatest rival, Carthage, and had annexed Greece. In 140... more...

The first thing I did when I bought my Grundy Projector was take a trip to about two years ahead and see what was going to happen to me. Everyone was doing it around that time; students were taking short trips into the future to learn whether or not they would pass their exams, married couples were looking ahead to see how many kids they were going to have, businessmen were going into the future to... more...

The world is so taken up of late with novels and romances, that it will be hard for a private history to be taken for genuine, where the names and other circumstances of the person are concealed, and on this account we must be content to leave the reader to pass his own opinion upon the ensuing sheet, and take it just as he pleases. The author is here supposed to be writing her own history, and in the... more...

CHAPTER I.FRANKIE AND HIS WHEELBARROW.I have already told you that Frankie lived in a pretty cottage, separated from the road by a green lawn, which lay in front of it. On the other side of the street, the land was much lower, a little shining brook running through it, and sometimes, after a rain, there was quite a pond of water. In winter this was a pleasant place for Willie to skate. His mamma liked... more...

orrible though the civil war was, heartrending though it was that brother should fight against brother, there remains as an offset the glory that has accrued to the nation by the countless deeds of heroism performed by both sides in the struggle. The captains and the armies who after long years of dreary campaigning and bloody, stubborn lighting brought the war to a close have left us more than a... more...

The original documents relating to Mr. Mungo Park's last mission into Africa having been entrusted to the Directors of the African Institution by the Secretary of State for the Colonial Department, with liberty to publish them, in case they should deem it expedient; the Directors now avail themselves of this permission, by publishing the papers for the benefit of Mr. Park's family. These... more...

Possession     Scene.—The Everlasting Habitations It is evening (or so it seems), and to the comfortably furnished Victorian drawing-room a middle-aged maid-servant in cap and apron brings a lamp, and proceeds to draw blinds and close curtains. To do this she passes the fire-place, where before a pleasantly bright hearth sits, comfortably sedate, an elderly lady whose countenance and attitude... more...