Classics Books

CHAPTER I."A child of our grandmother Eve, a female; or, for thy more sweet understanding, a woman."—Love's Labors Lost.The gates are thrown wide open, and the carriage rolls smoothly down the long dark avenue, beneath the waving branches of the tall elms and the copper beeches, through which the dying sun is flinging its parting rays. The horses, sniffing the air of home, fling up their... more...

Madam, You have graciously conveyed to me the intelligence that during the weary weeks spent far from his home—in alternate hope and fear, in suffering and mortal trial—a Prince whose memory all men must reverence, the Emperor Frederick, found pleasure in the reading of my stories: that "they interested and fascinated him." While the world was watching daily at the bedside of your... more...

EVACUATION OF RICHMOND, 1865. On Saturday, the 1st day of April, 1865, orders reached us at camp headquarters of the Seventh South Carolina Cavalry, Gary's Brigade, to send forward all the dismounted men of the regiment to report to Lt. Col. Barham, Twenty-fourth Regiment Virginia Cavalry, in command of dismounted men of the brigade, for duty on the lines. Began to think that a move was intended... more...

THE FROST SPIRIT He comes,—he comes,—the Frost Spirit comesYou may trace his footsteps nowOn the naked woods and the blasted fields and thebrown hill's withered brow.He has smitten the leaves of the gray old treeswhere their pleasant green came forth,And the winds, which follow wherever he goes,have shaken them down to earth. He comes,—he comes,—the Frost Spirit comes!from the frozen... more...

It was one of those exquisite days that come in every winter, in which it seems no longer the dead body, but the lovely ghost of summer. Such a day bears to its sister of the happier time something of the relation the marble statue bears to the living form; the sense it awakes of beauty is more abstract, more ethereal; it lifts the soul into a higher region than will summer day of lordliest splendour.... more...

CHAPTER I. THE APPARITION. "Be patient a few: minutes longer! There's a man beckoning to go with us," said the boatman to his passengers, two women and one man. The man was gray-haired, of slender form, rubicund face, and blue eyes of a kindly, but absent-minded and weary expression; a heavy moustache, wholly covering the upper lip, seemed out of keeping with this inoffensive face. He wore... more...

CHAPTER I. DEMONOLOGY—THE DEVIL, A MOST UNACCOUNTABLE PERSONAGE—WHO IS HE?—HISPREDILECTION FOR OLD WOMEN—TRADITIONS CONCERNING EVIL SPIRITS, &C. Children and old women have been accustomed to hear so many frightful things of the cloven-footed potentate, and have formed such diabolical ideas of his satanic majesty, exhibiting him in so many... more...

CHAPTER ONE "How do you do?" The remark was addressed to a young man who roused himself from a brown study and looked up. Then he looked down to see whence the voice proceeded. Directly in his pathway stood a wee boy, a veritable cherub in modern raiment, whose rosy lips smiled up at him blandly, quite regardless of the sugary smears that surrounded them. One hand clasped a crumpled paper bag;... more...

Eighteen men and two women in the closed world of a space ship for five months can only spell tension and trouble—but in this case, the atmosphere was literally poisoned.   Five months out from Earth, we were half-way to Saturn and three-quarters of the way to murder. At least, I was. I was sick of the feuding, the worries and the pettiness of the other nineteen aboard. My stomach heaved at the bad... more...

I The morning was as dark and cold as city snow could make it—a dingy whirl at the window; a smoky gust through the fireplace; a shadow black as a bear's cave under the table. Nothing in all the cavernous room, loomed really warm or familiar except a glass of stale water, and a vapid, half-eaten grape-fruit. Packed into his pudgy pillows like a fragile piece of china instead of a human being... more...