Classics Books

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...

Here is history's biggest news scoop! Those intrepid reporters Jack Lait and Lee Mortimer, whose best-selling exposes of life's seamy side from New York to Medicine Hat have made them famous, here strip away the veil of millions of miles to bring you the lowdown on our sister planet. It is an amazing account of vice and violence, of virtues and victims, told in vivid, jet-speed style. Here... 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...

ACT I The hall of EARTH-SPIRIT, Act IV, feebly lighted by an oil lamp on the centre table. Even this is dimmed by a heavy shade. Lulu's picture is gone from the easel, which still stands by the foot of the stairs. The fire-screen and the chair by the ottoman are gone too. Down left is a small tea-table, with a coffee-pot and a cup of black coffee on it, and an arm-chair next it. In this chair,... 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...

HISTORICAL SKETCH. The earliest notice of Britain is in Herodotus ( 480-408); but he mentions the Tin Islands (Scilly Islands and Cornwall), only to confess his ignorance about them. More important is a passage in Aristotle ( 384-322), who (writing a century later) is the earliest author who mentions the British Isles by name, as he does in the following passage: "Beyond the Pillars of Hercules... more...

TWO WINNERS OF CROWNS The July sun was blazing over the country of Greece. Dust from the dry plain hung in the air. But what cared the happy travelers for dust or heat? They were on their way to Olympia to see the games. Every road teemed with a chattering crowd of men and boys afoot and on horses. They wound down from the high mountains to the north. They came along the valley from the east and out... 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...

CHAPTER THE FIRST You are here invited to read the story of an Event which occurred in an out-of-the-way corner of England, some years since. The persons principally concerned in the Event are:—a blind girl; two (twin) brothers; a skilled surgeon; and a curious foreign woman. I am the curious foreign woman. And I take it on myself—for reasons which will presently appear—to tell the story. So far... 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...