Classics Books

CHAPTER ONE “THE WHISPERING VOICE” In the greatest city of the modern world, in the Metropolis of Guilt and Guile—where Alias and Alibi ride in gum-shod limousines while Mary Smith of the pure heart walks the pavements with broken shoes—there is a mansion so rich and so rare that it stands alone. Turret and tower, green-bronze roof, Cararra-marbled portico and iron-grilled gates brought from... more...

PREFACE America since the days of Captain John Smith has been the land of hope for multitudes in Europe. In many an humble home, perhaps in some English village, or an Ulster farm, or in the Rhine valley, one might find a family assembled for the reading of a letter from son, or brother, or friend, who had made the great venture of going to the New World. "Land is abundant here and cheap," the... more...

CHAPTER I. SINGING SAL. On a certain golden afternoon in August, when the sea was as still and radiant as the vaulted blue overhead, and when the earth was lying so hushed and silent that you would have thought it was listening for the chirp of the small birds among the gorse, a young girl of about seventeen or so was walking over the downs that undulate, wave on wave, from Newhaven all along the coast... more...

They were rather an incongruous element amid the festivities, but they bore themselves very well, notwithstanding, and seemed to be sufficiently interested. The elder of the two—a tall, slender, middle-aged woman, with a somewhat severe, though delicate face—sat quietly apart, looking on at the rough dances and games with a keen relish of their primitive uncouthness; but the younger, a slight,... more...

REMARKS. The author of this tragedy, to whose vigorous mind the English are indebted for their choicest moral works, came into the world with a frame so weak, that he was christened immediately on his birth, in consequence of the symptoms he gave of a speedy dissolution. The hand which reared him did a more than ordinary service to the age in which he lived, and to succeeding generations.... more...

CHAPTER I     Man is his own star; and the soul that can    Render an honest and a perfect man    Commands all light, all influence, all fate,    Nothing to him falls early, or too late.    Our acts our angels are, or good or ill,     Our fatal shadows that walk by us still.                           BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER. Minks—Herbert... more...

SIELANKA. An Idyll. In the woods, in the deep woods, was an open glade in which stood the house of the forester Stephan. The house was built of logs packed with moss, and the roof was thatched with straw; hard by the house stood two outbuildings; in front of it was a piece of fenced-in ground, and an old well with a long, crooked sweep; the water in the well was covered with a green vegetation at the... more...

MADAM CROWL'S GHOST Twenty years have passed since you last saw Mrs. Jolliffe's tall slim figure. She is now past seventy, and can't have many mile-stones more to count on the journey that will bring her to her long home. The hair has grown white as snow, that is parted under her cap, over her shrewd, but kindly face. But her figure is still straight, and her step light and active. She... more...

INTRODUCTION Bernard Mandeville's first extant book in English, Some Fables after the Easie and Familiar Method of Monsieur de la Fontaine, was published in 1703; it reappeared with additional fables in 1704 as Aesop Dress'd. Neither title reveals that, except for two original fables by Mandeville, the book consists entirely of verse translations from the twelve books of La Fontaine's... more...

SERVIA AND THE "SERVIAN QUESTION." The principality of Servia was, a few years since, scarcely known to the English public except as an obscure province of the Ottoman empire, into which few travellers had penetrated; and of the population, internal resources, &c., of which, little information existed, and little curiosity was felt. But the singular political drama of which it has lately... more...