Classics Books

JUDGE TRENT Judge Trent's chair was tipped back at a comfortable angle for the accommodation of his gaitered feet, which rested against the steam radiator in his private office. There had been a second desk introduced into this sanctum within the last month, and the attitude of the young man seated at it indicated but a brief suspension of business as he looked up to greet his employer. The judge... more...

CHAPTER I. OF THE LINEAGE AND CONDITION OF SIR JOHN CONSTANTINE. "I have laboured to make a covenant with myself, that affection may not press upon judgment: for I suppose there is no man, that hath any apprehension of gentry or nobleness, but his affection stands to a continuance of a noble name and house, and would take hold of a twig or twine-thread to uphold it: and yet time hath his... more...

VENICE.   At six, on a bright morning, the 1st of September 1851, we left the quay of Trieste in the steamer for Venice. We were in no particular mood upon the subject. If anything, we rather feared that the famous City of the Sea might turn out to have been overpraised. However, we resolved to be candid. The morning passed pleasantly enough. We admired the snowy tops of the Styrian Alps on the right,... more...

We have walked much this awake and have stopped now for sleep. Last City is far behind us. Except for the two lamps we keep lighted to frighten away the Groles, there is nothing but blackness in the passage. The others are sleeping, and close beside me, Nina sleeps also. The sound of her breathing is all I have in the darkness. Thoughts are not clear when the body is so tired, and the things that have... more...

I MR. BEETLE MAN The man sat in a niche of the mountain, busily hating the Caribbean Sea. It was quite a contract that he had undertaken, for there was a large expanse of Caribbean Sea in sight to hate; very blue, and still, and indifferent to human emotions. However, the young man was a good steadfast hater, and he came there every day to sit in the shade of the overhanging boulder, where there was a... more...

CHAPTER I.on heresy and orthodoxy. The original meaning of the word heresy is choice.  “It was long used,” writes Dr. Waddington, “by the philosophers to designate the preference and selection of some speculative opinion, and in process of time was applied without any sense of reproach to every sect.”  The most fruitful source of speculative opinion is, and has ever been, religion; from the... more...

VIGI Wisest of dogs was Vigi, a tawny-coated hound That King Olaf, warring over green hills of Ireland, found; His merry Norse were driving away a mighty herd For feasts upon the dragonships, when an isleman dared a word: "From all those stolen hundreds, well might ye spare my score." "Ay, take them," quoth the gamesome king, "but not a heifer more. Choose out thine own, nor hinder... more...

CHAPTER I. FAIR ACRES. It was a fair morning of early summer, when the low beams of the eastern sun, threw flickering shadows across the lawn, which lay before Fair Acres Manor, nestling under the shelter of the Mendip Hills, somewhere between Wells and Cheddar. Truth compels me to say, that the lawn was covered with daisies, and that their bright eyes looked fearlessly up into the blue sky; for mowing... more...

By their fruits ye shall know them. Last Sunday I said something of the moral condition of Boston; to-day I ask your attention to a Sermon of the Spiritual Condition of Boston. I use the word spiritual in its narrower sense, and speak of the condition of this town in respect to piety. A little while since, in a sermon of piety, I tried to show that love of God lay at the foundation of all manly... more...

CHAPTER I The Title. "Book of the Dead" is the title now commonly given to the great collection of funerary texts which the ancient Egyptian scribes composed for the benefit of the dead. These consist of spells and incantations, hymns and litanies, magical formulae and names, words of power and prayers, and they are found cut or painted on walls of pyramids and tombs, and painted on coffins and... more...