Classics Books

On the Upper DeckSic itur ad astra.One morning in December the steamer Tabo was laboriously ascending the tortuous course of the Pasig, carrying a large crowd of passengers toward the province of La Laguna. She was a heavily built steamer, almost round, like the tabú from which she derived her name, quite dirty in spite of her pretensions to whiteness, majestic and grave from her leisurely motion.... more...

I "Her cheeks were flushed delicately with the soft pink of the lichen flowers that bloom in the rare days of early summer. Her eyes played with a light as elusive, as quick as the golden radiance on the seas." Great excitement prevailed among the members of the tribe. Along a mottled green-and-brown stretch of shore, which rolled undulatingly toward the icy fringe of the polar sea, more than... more...

PREFACE. When Mr. Carlyle endeavoured to introduce Jean Paul Richter to the English public, it seems to us that he was more than usually unsuccessful. The literary publics of the England and the Germany of those days were very different, and perhaps the errors of taste, which each professed to find in the other, were not in truth wholly upon the side of John Bull. We feel, (with much deprecation of our... more...

CHAPTER I Kedzie Thropp had never seen Fifth Avenue or a yacht or a butler or a glass of champagne or an ocean or a person of social prominence. She wanted to see them. For each five minutes of the day and night, one girl comes to NewYork to make her life; or so the compilers of statistics claim. This was Kedzie Thropp's five minutes. She did not know it, and the two highly important, because... more...

I Never say you know the last words about any human heart! I was once treated to a revelation which startled and touched me in the nature of a person with whom I had been acquainted—well, as I supposed—for years, whose character I had had good reasons, heaven knows, to appreciate and in regard to whom I flattered myself I had nothing more to learn. It was on the terrace of the Kursaal at Homburg,... more...

I MANTUA DIVES AVIS Among biographical commonplaces one frequently finds the generalization that it is the provincial who acquires the perspective requisite for a true estimate of a nation, and that it is the country-boy reared in lonely communion with himself who attains the deepest knowledge of human nature. If there be some degree of truth in this reflection, Publius Vergilius Maro, the... more...

CHAPTER I. OUT ON PICKET THE BOYS SHOW THE DEACON A NEW WRINKLE IN THE CULINARY ART. SOME days later, Si had charge of a picket-post on the Readyville Pike, near Cripple Deer Creek. The Deacon went with them, at their request, which accorded with his own inclinations, The weather was getting warmer every day, which made him fidgety to get back to his own fields, though Si insisted that they were still... more...

INTRODUCTION Where did we come from?What are we doing here?Whither are we going? These questions have puzzled thinking people since consciousness first dawned in the brain. Many have sought to answer them, so why not I?—with the hope that the reading of this book will arouse in the minds of the readers thoughts that will enable them to answer these questions for themselves. Were you suddenly to find... more...

I "The Fire was Kind" The little house was waiting, as it had waited for many years. Grey and weather-worn, it leaned toward the sheltering hillside as though to gather from the kindly earth some support and comfort for old age. Five-and-twenty Winters had broken its spirit, five-and-twenty Springs had not brought back the heart of it, that had once gone out, with dancing feet and singing, and... more...

JOY AND POWER St. John viii. 17: If ye know these things, happy are ye if ye do them. I ask you to think for a little while about the religion of Christ in its relation to happiness. This is only one point in the circle of truth at the centre of which Jesus stands. But it is an important point because it marks one of the lines of power which radiate from Him. To look at it clearly and steadily is not... more...