Classics Books

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...

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...

PAUL BOURGET Born in Amiens, September 2, 1852, Paul Bourget was a pupil at the Lycee Louis le Grand, and then followed a course at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes, intending to devote himself to Greek philology. He, however, soon gave up linguistics for poetry, literary criticism, and fiction. When yet a very young man, he became a contributor to various journals and reviews, among others to the... more...

lthough there are several excellent persons of the church of England, whose good intentions and endeavours have not been wanting to propagate the gospel in foreign parts, who have even combined into societies for that very purpose, and given great encouragement, not only for English missionaries in the West-Indies, but also, for the reformed of other nations, led by their example, to propagate... more...

INTRODUCTION The title of Scottish, applied to the holy ones whose names occur in these short notices, must be understood to refer not so much to their nationality as to the field in which, they laboured or the localities where traces of their cultus are to be found. The Calendar here submitted does not pretend to be exhaustive; the saints therein noted are those who appear prominently in such records... more...

PROLOGUE The Affair of the Man Who Vanished Mr. Maverick Narkom, Superintendent at Scotland Yard, flung aside the paper he was reading and wheeled round in his revolving desk-chair, all alert on the instant, like a terrier that scents a rat. He knew well what the coming of the footsteps toward his private office portended; his messenger was returning at last. Good! Now he would get at the facts of the... more...

Next day Annele seemed quite satisfied again with Franzl—she was such a capital servant, and Annele said: "I have not yet given you any thing, Franzl; do you prefer a gown or money?" "I should like money best." "There are two crown dollars for you." Lenz was very much pleased when Franzl told him this—she is a spoiled, hasty, dear, good child, thought he—and Franzl's... more...

CHAPTER I A CACTUS-PLANT     For life, with all it yields of joy and woe,    And hope and fear,…    Is just our chance o' the prize of learning love,—    How love might be, hath been indeed, and is.             BROWNING'S "A Death in the Desert." Everything about Lovey Mary was a contradiction, from her hands and feet, which seemed to have been meant... more...