Classics Books

FIRST NIGHT THE THREE HAPPY CHILDREN Not once upon a time but just now, in a white house by the side of a road, live three happy children. Their mother and father gave them very odd names, for two old uncles and one aunt, which pleased the old people very much. Their names are all written in the big family Bible,—Jehosophat Green, Marmaduke Green, and Hepzebiah Green. Jehosophat is just seven years... more...

"Bettersea trem? Right, miss!" My wife, who has been married long enough to feel deeply gratified at being mistaken for a maiden lady, smiled seraphically at the conductor, and allowed herself to be hoisted up the steps of the majestic vehicle provided by a paternal county council to convey passengers—at a loss to the ratepayers, I understand—from the Embankment to Battersea. Presently we... more...

INTRODUCTION The verses in this volume cover very many and various occasions; and are therefore the very contrary of what is commonly called occasional verse. The term is used with a meaning that is very mutable; or with a meaning that has been greatly distorted and degraded. Occasion should mean opportunity; and in the case of poetry it should rather mean provocation. And the trick of writing upon... more...

CHAPTER I THE ODDEST THING THAT EVER HAPPENED "Well, if that isn't the oddest thing that ever happened!" murmured Laura Belding, sitting straight up on the stool before the high desk in her father's glass-enclosed office, from which elevation she could look down the long aisles of his jewelry store and out into Market Street, Centerport's main business thoroughfare. But Laura was... more...

CHAPTER I "Whaur are ye aff til this bonny mornin', Maggie, my doo?" said the soutar, looking up from his work, and addressing his daughter as she stood in the doorway with her shoes in her hand. "Jist ower to Stanecross, wi' yer leave, father, to speir the mistress for a goupin or twa o' chaff: yer bed aneth ye's grown unco hungry-like." "Hoot, the bed's... more...

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...

Chapter I A bright spring day was fading into evening. High overhead in the clear heavens small rosy clouds seemed hardly to move across the sky but to be sinking into its depths of blue. In a handsome house in one of the outlying streets of the government town of O—— (it was in the year 1842) two women were sitting at an open window; one was about fifty, the other an old lady of seventy. The name... more...