Classics Books

CHAPTER I TOPOGRAPHICAL The modern traveller of to-day arriving at Rome by rail drives to his hotel through the uninteresting streets of a modern town, and thence finds his way to the Forum and the Palatine, where his attention is speedily absorbed by excavations which he finds it difficult to understand. It is as likely as not that he may leave Rome without once finding an opportunity of surveying the... more...

CHAPTER I. AT HILTON SEMINARY. It was four o'clock in the afternoon on the opening day of the midwinter term at Hilton Seminary, a noted institution located in a beautiful old town of Western New York. A group of gay girls had just gathered in one of the pleasant and spacious recreation rooms and were chattering like the proverbial flock of magpies—exchanging merry greetings after their... more...

I. THE TWO SPRINGS High above Sierra's peaks stands grim Mount Tallac. Ten thousand feet above the sea it rears its head to gaze out north to that vast and wonderful turquoise that men call Lake Tahoe, and northwest, across a piney sea, to its great white sister, Shasta of the Snows; wonderful colors and things on every side, mast-like pine trees strung with jewelry, streams that a Buddhist would... more...

DANIEL WEBSTER AS A MASTER OF ENGLISH STYLE. From my own experience and observation I should say that every boy, who is ready enough in spelling, grammar, geography, and arithmetic, is appalled when he is commanded to write what is termed "a composition." When he enters college the same fear follows him and the Professor of Rhetoric is a more terrible personage to his imagination than the... more...

Chapter I To and fro, like a wild creature in its cage, paced that handsome woman, with bent head, locked hands, and restless steps. Some mental storm, swift and sudden as a tempest of the tropics, had swept over her and left its marks behind. As if in anger at the beauty now proved powerless, all ornaments had been flung away, yet still it shone undimmed, and filled her with a passionate regret. A... more...

CHAPTER IA Quaker Gun “And will the Thunder Bird really lay its egg upon the moon? Such a hard egg, too! Will it–really–drop a pound weight of steel upon the head of the Man in the Moon?... Oh! de-ar Mammy Moon–what a shock she’ll get.” The girl, the fifteen-year-old Camp Fire Girl–all but sixteen now–to whom Mammy Moon had been the fairy foster-mother of her childhood, ever since she... more...

THE COMING OF THE STORKIT was always a puzzle to the little girl how the stork that brought her ever reached the lonely Dakota farm-house on a December afternoon without her being frozen; and it was another mystery, just as deep, how the strange bird, which her mother said was no larger than a blue crane, was able, on leaving, to carry her father away with him to some family, a long, long distance off,... more...

CHAPTER I INTRODUCTORY When the history of the Nineteenth Century—'the Wonderful Century,' as it has, not inaptly, been called—comes to be written, a foremost place must be assigned to that great movement by which evolution has become the dominant factor in scientific progress, while its influence has been felt in every sphere of human speculation and effort. At the beginning of the... more...

CHAPTER I MELUN Scores upon scores of times had I steamed past Melun in the Dijon express, ever eyeing the place wistfully, ever too hurried, perhaps too lazy, to make a halt. Not until September last did I carry out a long cherished intention. It is unpardonable to pass and re-pass any French town without alighting for at least an hour's stroll! Melun, capital of the ancient Gatinais, now... more...

CHAPTER I THE EPISODE OF THE PATIENT WHO DISAPPOINTED HER DOCTOR Hilda Wade's gift was so unique, so extraordinary, that I must illustrate it, I think, before I attempt to describe it. But first let me say a word of explanation about the Master. I have never met anyone who impressed me so much with a sense of GREATNESS as Professor Sebastian. And this was not due to his scientific eminence alone:... more...