Classics Books

CHAPTER I I AM BORN The sun was slowly setting in the west, casting golden beams of light into the somber old room. That's the way it ought to begin, I know, and I'd like to do it, but I can't. I'm beginning with my being born, of course, and Nurse Sarah says the sun wasn't shining at all. It was night and the stars were out. She remembers particularly about the stars, for... more...

OUR HERO DEPARTS FROM VIENNA, AND QUITS THE DOMAIN OF VENUS FOR THE ROUGH FIELD OF MARS. Luckily for our adventurer, before she adhered to this determination, the young Count de Melvil was summoned to Presburg by his father, who desired to see him, before he should take the field, in consequence of a rupture between the Emperor and the French King; and Fathom of course quitted Vienna, in order to... more...

Chapter 1 It was four o'clock when the ceremony was over and the carriages began to arrive. There had been a crowd following all the way, owing to the exuberance of Marija Berczynskas. The occasion rested heavily upon Marija's broad shoulders—it was her task to see that all things went in due form, and after the best home traditions; and, flying wildly hither and thither, bowling every one... more...

The sea was very calm. There was no ship in sight, and the sea-gulls were motionless upon its even greyness. The sky was dark with lowering clouds, but there was no wind. The line of the horizon was clear and delicate. The shingly beach, no less deserted, was thick with tangled seaweed, and the innumerable shells crumbled under the feet that trod them. The breakwaters, which sought to prevent the... more...

She awoke, and didn't even wonder where she was. First there were feelings—a feeling of existence, a sense of still being alive when she should be dead, an awareness of pain that made her body its playground. After that, there came a thought. It was a simple thought, and her mind blurted it out before she could stop it: Oh, God, now I won't even be plain any more. I'll be ugly. The... more...

THE HOSTING OF THE SIDHEThe host is riding from KnocknareaAnd over the grave of Clooth-na-bare;Caolte tossing his burning hairAnd Niamh callingAway, come away: Empty your heart of its mortal dream. The winds awaken, the leaves whirl round, Our cheeks are pale, our hair is unbound, Our breasts are heaving, our eyes are a-gleam, Our arms are waving, our lips are apart; And if any gaze on our rushing... more...

I awoke from profound sleep to find two black-swathed forms standing silently beside me, their faces pale blurs in the gloom. As I blinked to clear my sleep-dimmed eyes, one of them beckoned impatiently, and suddenly I realized the purpose of this midnight summons. For years I had been expecting it, ever since my father, the Baron Kralitz, had revealed to me the secret and the curse that hung over our... more...

BY PROXY It will be recalled without effort—possibly, indeed, without interest—that the obsequies of the old Senator Boligand were a distinguished success: a fashionable, proper function, ordered by the young widow with exquisite taste, as all the world said, and conducted without reproach, as the undertaker and the clergy very heartily agreed. At the Church of the Lifted Cross, the incident of the... more...

The six tales now translated for the English reader were written by Turgenev at various dates between 1847 and 1881. Their chronological order is:— Pyetushkov, 1847 The Brigadier, 1867 A Strange Story, 1869 Punin and Baburin, 1874 Old Portraits, 1881 A Desperate Character, 1881 Pyetushkov is the work of a young man of twenty-nine, and its lively, unstrained realism is so bold, intimate, and delicate... more...

I North of east, in the bottom, where the road drops from the High Moor, is the village of Garth in Garthdale. It crouches there with a crook of the dale behind and before it, between half-shut doors of the west and south. Under the mystery and terror of its solitude it crouches, like a beaten thing, cowering from its topmost roof to the bowed back of its stone bridge. It is the last village up... more...