Classics Books

CHAPTER I.   If you take the turn to the left, after you pass the lyke-gate at Combehurst Church, you will come to the wooden bridge over the brook; keep along the field-path which mounts higher and higher, and, in half a mile or so, you will be in a breezy upland field, almost large enough to be called a down, where sheep pasture on the short, fine, elastic turf. You look down on Combehurst and its... more...

THUNDERSTORMS My mind has thunderstorms,  That brood for heavy hours:Until they rain me words,  My thoughts are drooping flowersAnd sulking, silent birds. Yet come, dark thunderstorms,  And brood your heavy hours;For when you rain me words,  My thoughts are dancing flowersAnd joyful singing birds. Sometimes I hear fine ladies sing,  Sometimes I smoke and drink with men;Sometimes I play at... more...

PREFACE. A readable book should instruct, entertain and amuse. The author, outside of the historical interest of this little book, has aimed to cover a broad-enough field for all classes of readers to find some nourishing food—at least in the way of variety and shifting scenes—from the standpoint of a young private. And in order to understand his viewpoint, a brief sketch of the author is... more...

INTRODUCTION. There is no need for any one to explain to the working men and women in America what this pamphlet is written for or why it is necessary that they should have this information. They know better than I could tell them, so I shall not try. I have tried to give the knowledge of the best French and Dutch physicians translated into the simplest English, that all may easily understand. There... more...

CHAPTER I INTRODUCTORY When the history of the Nineteenth Century—'the Wonderful Century,' as it has, not inaptly, been called—comes to be written, a foremost place must be assigned to that great movement by which evolution has become the dominant factor in scientific progress, while its influence has been felt in every sphere of human speculation and effort. At the beginning of the... more...

CHAPTER I MELUN Scores upon scores of times had I steamed past Melun in the Dijon express, ever eyeing the place wistfully, ever too hurried, perhaps too lazy, to make a halt. Not until September last did I carry out a long cherished intention. It is unpardonable to pass and re-pass any French town without alighting for at least an hour's stroll! Melun, capital of the ancient Gatinais, now... more...

INTRODUCTION One of the most remarkable facts about Ibsen is the orderly development of his genius. He himself repeatedly maintained that his dramas were not mere isolated accidents. In the foreword to the readers in the popular edition of 1898 he urges the public to read his dramas in the same order in which he had written them, deplores the fact that his earlier works are less known and less... more...

CHAPTER I The Puce Dressing-gown The peculiar angle of the earth's axis to the plane of the ecliptic--that angle which is chiefly responsible for our geography and therefore for our history--had caused the phenomenon known in London as summer. The whizzing globe happened to have turned its most civilized face away from the sun, thus producing night in Selwood Terrace, South Kensington. In No. 91... more...

The 1,000-foot tower that formed the focal point and central feature of the Universal Exposition of 1889 at Paris has become one of the best known of man’s works. It was among the most outstanding technological achievements of an age which was itself remarkable for such achievements. Second to the interest shown in the tower’s structural aspects was the interest in its mechanical organs. Of these,... more...

EPISTLES. EPISTLE I. TO MY HONOURED FRIEND SIR ROBERT HOWARD,[1] ON HIS EXCELLENT POEMS.   As there is music uninform'd by art  In those wild notes, which, with a merry heart,  The birds in unfrequented shades express,  Who, better taught at home, yet please us less:  So in your verse a native sweetness dwells,  Which shames composure, and its art excels.  Singing no more can your... more...