Classics Books

CHAPTER I Richard Carter had called the place "Crownlands," not to please himself, or even his wife. But it was to his mother's newly born family pride that the idea of being the Carters of Crownlands made its appeal. The estate, when he bought it, had belonged to a Carter, and the tradition was that two hundred years before it had been a grant of the first George to the first of the name... more...

WAS GENERAL THOMAS SLOW AT NASHVILLE?   new generation has come upon the stage since our civil war. It has its own writers on the events of that struggle. Some of these, careful students as they are, make proper and effective use of the stores of material which the Government has collected and published. Others, stumbling upon interesting dispatches of notable campaigns, read them in connection with... more...

CHAPTER I. One pleasant October evening, Arthur Hamilton was at play in front of the small, brown cottage in which he lived. He and his brother James, were having a great frolic with a large spotted dog, who was performing a great variety of antics, such as only well-educated dogs understand. But Rover had been carefully initiated into the mysteries of making a bow while standing on his hind legs,... more...

When "Gilfillan's Gallery" first appeared, a copy of it was sent to an eminent lay-divine, the first sentence of whose reply was, "You have sent me a list of shipwrecks." It was but too true, for that "Gallery" contains the name of a Godwin, shipwrecked on a false system, and a Shelley, shipwrecked on an extravagant version of that false system—and a Hazlitt, shipwrecked... more...

CHAPTER ONE A COMMONPLACE MAN WAS PETER Daffodils were selling at two bits a dozen in the flower stand beside the New Era Drug Store. Therefore Peter Stevenson knew that winter was over, and that the weather would probably "settle." There would be the spring fogs, of course—and fog did not agree with Helen May since that last spell of grippe. Peter decided that he would stop and see the... more...

Within a day's journey of Kennedy Square lay another wide breathing-space, its winding paths worn smooth by countless hurrying feet. Over its flat monotony straggled a line of gnarled willows, marking the wanderings of some guileless brook long since swallowed up and lost in the mazes of the great city like many another young life fresh from green fields and sunny hill-sides. This desert of weeds... more...

L'Ombre is a Spanish Game at Cards, as much as to say, The Man: so he who undertakes to play the Game, sayes Jo so l'Ombre, or, I am the Man. And 'tis a common saying with the Spaniards, (alluding to the name) that the Spanish l'Ombre as far surpasses the French le Beste, as a Man do's a Beast, There are divers sorts of it, of which, this (which we shall only treat of, and... more...

Paying the Footing. Now, it don’t matter a bit what sort of clay a pot’s made of, if when it’s been tried in the fire it turns out sound and rings well when it’s struck. If I’m only common red ware, without even a bit of glaze on me, and yet answer the purpose well for which I’m made, why I’m a good pot, ain’t I, even if I only hold water? But what I hate is... more...

WILSON'S TALES OF THE BORDERS, AND OF SCOTLAND. Notwithstanding the shortness of their days, the bitterness of their frosts, and the fury of their storms, December and January are merry months. First comes old Christmas, shaking his hoary locks, belike, in the shape of snow-drift, and laughing, well-pleased, beneath his crown of mistletoe, over the smoking sirloin and the savoury goose. There is... more...

Why Not? At three o’clock this afternoon Evelyn Wastneys died. I am Evelyn Wastneys, and I died, standing at the door of an old country home in Ireland, with my hands full of ridiculous little silver shoes and horseshoes, and a Paris hat on my head, and a trembling treble voice whispering in my ear:— “Good-bye, Evelyn darling—darling! Thank you—thank you for all you have been to me! Oh,... more...