Classics Books

CHAPTER I THE MINER'S REASONS A furious blizzard was raging. Six or eight miners of various ages were huddled around the stove in a little road-house where they were likely to remain storm-bound for several days. "Chuck some more wood into that bloomin' fire and fill up my pipe if you fellers want a yarn from me," said one, when they had besieged him for a story with which to pass the... more...

TERRY CHAPTER I THE FOX The frosty silence of the snow-mantled hills was rent by the vicious crack of a high-powered, small-calibered rifle. The hunter sprang from the thicket in which he had lain concealed and crossed the gully to a knoll where a black furry bundle had dropped to the snow after one convulsive leap. Exultant, Terry bent down to examine the silky black coat. "Right through the ear.... more...

CHAPTER I THE EPITAPH OF SUMMER As I started out from the farm with a basket of potatoes, for our supper in the shack half a mile up the hillside, where we had made our Summer camp, my eye fell on a notice affixed to a gate-post, and, as I read it, my heart sank—sank as the sun was sinking yonder with wistful glory behind the purple ridge. I tore the paper from the gate-post and put it in... more...

PREFACE The distinguished soldier and critic whose name appears on the title page argues, as do various other Northern critics, that the usual Southern estimate of the strength of the Confederate army is too small by half. This conclusion is supported, they contend, both by the census of 1860, according to which there were at the very beginning of the war between the States nearly a million men in the... more...

I. Of the celebrated Mrs. Disraeli her husband is reported to have said, "She is an excellent creature, but she never can remember which came first, the Greeks or the Romans." In my walk through life I have constantly found myself among excellent creatures of this sort. The world is full of vague people, and in the average man, and still more in the average woman, the chronological sense seems... more...

ROBERT GAMBLE CABELL I "He loved chivalrye,Trouthe and honour, fredom and curteisye.And of his port as meek as is a mayde,He never yet no vileinye ne saydeIn al his lyf, unto no maner wight.He was a verray parfit gentil knyght." Introduction The Cabell case belongs to comedy in the grand manner. For fifteen years or more the man wrote and wrote—good stuff, sound stuff, extremely original... more...

THE GENIUS AND POETRY OF POPE. Few poets during their lifetime have been at once so much admired and so much abused as Pope. Some writers, destined to oblivion in after-ages, have been loaded with laurels in their own time; while others, on whom Fame was one day to "wait like a menial," have gone to the grave neglected, if not decried and depreciated. But it was the fate of Pope to combine in... more...

INTRODUCTION These pictures of Colonial life and adventure make up a panorama which extends from Powhatan and John Smith, in the days of the Jamestown colony, to Pontiac’s attempt upon Detroit in the period which preceded the Revolution. Here one may read stories which are strange indeed, of King Philip’s War in New England, of a Dutch hero’s exploit on the shores of Long Island Sound,... more...

CHAPTER I [The Knighted Knave of Bergen] One day it occurred to me that it had been many years since the world had been afforded the spectacle of a man adventurous enough to undertake a journey through Europe on foot. After much thought, I decided that I was a person fitted to furnish to mankind this spectacle. So I determined to do it. This was in March, 1878. I looked about me for the right sort of... more...

CHAPTER I. The Condition of the Army of Northern Virginia in its Last Days—The Lines in Front of Petersburg—The Battles Around the City—The Final Struggle—Terrible Fighting—The Assaults on Forts Mahone and Gregg—Thrilling Scenes—The Main Bodies of Both Armies Stand and Look Anxiously On—The Confederate Army Severed—The Evacuation of Richmond and Petersburg—The Greetings of... more...