Classics Books

In the year 1785, a young and beautiful woman, whose dress and features bespoke her to be a native of Spain, was observed a few miles beyond Ponteland, on the road which leads to Rothbury. She appeared faint and weary; dimness was deepening over the lustre of her dark eyes, and their glance bespoke anxious misery. Her raiment was of the finest silk; but time had caused its colour to fade; and it hung... more...

WHITE ASHES CHAPTER I On the top floor of one of the lesser office buildings in the insurance district of lower New York, a man stood silent before a map desk on which was laid an opened map of the burned city. No other man was in the office, for this was on a Sunday; but it would not have mattered to the man at the map had the big room presented its usual busy appearance. All that went on about him... more...

HOW DOTH THE SIMPLE SPELLING-BEE How doth the Simple Spelling-bee Impruv each shining ower.Of course, I know not how it may be with you; but with me the mail brings daily a multitude of communications that I have not sought, and do not want; nor do I refer to bills alone; and so, when there came one day a printed card saying:— Why Heifer? I tossed it into my waste-paper basket, and remembered it no... more...

THE National Rifle Association may fairly claim the honour of introducing, at their meeting in July 1885, the subject of Military Revolver practice in this country. For years past the want of such a movement has been felt, but the many obstacles to be overcome have been so vast that no one seems to have cared to venture upon the matter, and so it has slept.The great drawback has been, and is now, to... more...

FIRST NIGHT THE THREE HAPPY CHILDREN Not once upon a time but just now, in a white house by the side of a road, live three happy children. Their mother and father gave them very odd names, for two old uncles and one aunt, which pleased the old people very much. Their names are all written in the big family Bible,—Jehosophat Green, Marmaduke Green, and Hepzebiah Green. Jehosophat is just seven years... more...

"Bettersea trem? Right, miss!" My wife, who has been married long enough to feel deeply gratified at being mistaken for a maiden lady, smiled seraphically at the conductor, and allowed herself to be hoisted up the steps of the majestic vehicle provided by a paternal county council to convey passengers—at a loss to the ratepayers, I understand—from the Embankment to Battersea. Presently we... more...

INTRODUCTION The verses in this volume cover very many and various occasions; and are therefore the very contrary of what is commonly called occasional verse. The term is used with a meaning that is very mutable; or with a meaning that has been greatly distorted and degraded. Occasion should mean opportunity; and in the case of poetry it should rather mean provocation. And the trick of writing upon... more...

CHAPTER I THE ODDEST THING THAT EVER HAPPENED "Well, if that isn't the oddest thing that ever happened!" murmured Laura Belding, sitting straight up on the stool before the high desk in her father's glass-enclosed office, from which elevation she could look down the long aisles of his jewelry store and out into Market Street, Centerport's main business thoroughfare. But Laura was... more...

Among small mammals accumulated, from Wyoming, in the Museum of Natural History of the University of Kansas, specimens of the wide-spread species Thomomys talpoides are abundantly represented. Subspecific names are available for most of these, but specimens from the Sierra Madre Mountain Range of Wyoming and Colorado prove upon comparison to pertain to an heretofore unnamed subspecies which may be... more...

HISTORICAL SIGNIFICANCE [ILLUSTRATION] The Louisiana Purchase Exposition was held in the city of St. Louis in 1904, in commemoration of the acquisition in 1803 of the vast territory west of the Mississippi, then called Louisiana. The transfer is generally regarded as one of the most important events in our national history and stands on record as the greatest acquisition of territory ever made by... more...