Classics Books

PREFACES, like long sermons to fashionable congregations, are distasteful to most readers, and in no very high favor with us. A deep interest in the welfare of South Carolina, and the high esteem in which we held the better, and more sensible class of her citizens, prompted us to sit down in Charleston, some four years ago (as a few of our friends are aware), and write this history. The malady of her... more...

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To uphold the "right of private judgment," and our "Christian liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free;" to add fuel to the fire of investigation, and in the crucible of deep inquiry, melt from the gold of pure religion, the dross of man's invention; to appeal from the erring tribunals of a fallible Priesthood, and restore to its original state the mutilated Testament of the... more...

THE SPREAD EAGLE In his extreme youth the adulation of all with whom he came in contact was not a cross to Fitzhugh Williams. It was the fear of expatriation that darkened his soul. From the age of five to the age of fourteen he was dragged about Europe by the hair of his head. I use his own subsequent expression. His father wanted him to be a good American; his mother wanted him to be a polite... more...

CHAPTER I. The Old Man's Sister. The weekly mail had just arrived at the Flying U ranch. Shorty, who had made the trip to Dry Lake on horseback that afternoon, tossed the bundle to the "Old Man" and was halfway to the stable when he was called back peremptorily. "Shorty! O-h-h, Shorty! Hi!" Shorty kicked his steaming horse in the ribs and swung round in the path, bringing up before... more...

Laurence leaned his arms upon the broad wooden hand-rail of the bulwarks. The water hissed away from the side. Immediately below it was laced by shifting patterns of white foam, and stained pale green, violet, and amber, by the light shining out through the rounds of the port-poles. Further away it showed blue black, but for a glistening on the hither side of the vast ridge and furrow. The smoke from... more...

TUNING THE LYRE. In the long ago when the earth was in process of formation, it must have been that those forces of nature most expert in the fashioning of the beautiful were ordered to come together as collaborators and give to the world Almaville! Journeying toward the designated spot, they halted on the outskirts of the site of the contemplated city, and tossed up a series of engirdling hills, whose... more...

1 "My rig's a little old, but that don't mean she's slow—Batman—that don't mean she's slow." Joe Burke was singing, driving south. His rig was a blue Ford pickup with a battered cap on the back. Batman, all six inches of him, was propped upright on the dash. Joe followed signs to the Weston Priory, climbing through woods and out onto an open plateau. A cluster of... more...

Embarcation.—Fellow-passengers.—A Gale at Sea.—Arrival at Sisal.—Ornithological Specimens.—Merida.—Fête of San Cristoval.—The Lottery.—A Scene of Confusion.—Principle of the Game.—Passion for Gambling.—A deformed Indian. The reader of my "Incidents of Travel in Central America, Chiapas, and Yucatan," may remember that the researches of Mr. Catherwood and myself in the... more...

Chapter ION THE ROADIn the eventful year, 1815, I was exactly three-and-twenty, and had just succeeded to a very large sum in consols and other securities. The first fall of Napoleon had thrown the continent open to English excursionists, anxious, let us suppose, to improve their minds by foreign travel; and I—the slight check of the "hundred days" removed, by the genius of Wellington, on the... more...