Classics Books

Reader, if thou hast never visited the Fern Isles, but intendest to visit them, thou hast a pleasure in reserve—a positive, downright, profitable pleasure—profitable as regards the health of the body, for a trip upon the sea makes the blood feel ten years younger, and dance in the veins as merrily as the waves around us; and profitable also to the mind, by filling it with fresh objects for wonder... more...

INTRODUCTION. Everybody in Christendom has heard of Simon, the magician, and how Peter, the apostle, rebuked him, as told in the narrative of the Acts of the Apostles. Many also have heard the legend of how at Rome this wicked sorcerer endeavoured to fly by aid of the demons, and how Peter caused him to fall headlong and thus miserably perish. And so most think that there is an end of the matter, and... more...

CHAPTER FIRST. Wiser Raymondus, in his closet pent,Laughs at such danger and adventurementWhen half his lands are spent in golden smoke,And now his second hopeful glasse is broke,But yet, if haply his third furnace hold,Devoteth all his pots and pans to gold.* * The author cannot remember where these lines are to be found: perhaps in Bishop Hall's Satires. [They occur in Book iv. Satire iii.]... more...

wenty years had left no trace inside Sam Kee's little shop on Mott Street. There were the same dusty jars of ginseng root and tigers' whiskers, the same little bronze Buddahs, the same gim-cracks mixed with fine jade. Edith Williams gave a little murmur of pleasure as the door shut behind them. "Mark," she said, "it hasn't changed! It doesn't look as if a thing had been... more...

THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES. IN September of the year during the February of which Hawthorne had completed "The Scarlet Letter," he began "The House of the Seven Gables." Meanwhile, he had removed from Salem to Lenox, in Berkshire County, Massachusetts, where he occupied with his family a small red wooden house, still standing at the date of this edition, near the Stockbridge Bowl.... more...

CHAPTER I THE MAN IN SECTION THIRTEENBARBARA THURSTON awakened with a violent start."Wha—a-at is it?" she muttered, then opened her eyes wide. In the darkness of the Pullman berth she could see nothing at all save a faint perpendicular line of light at the edges of the curtains that enclosed the section. "I—I wonder what made me wake up so suddenly?" Barbara put out a groping hand.... more...

They ran through the streets of the seaport town;They peered from the decks of the ships that lay:The cold sea-fog that came whitening downWas never as cold or white as they. "Ho, Starbuck and Pinckney and Tenterden!  Run for your shallops, gather your men,  Scatter your boats on the lower bay." Good cause for fear! In the thick middayThe hulk that lay by the rotting pier,Filled with the... more...

Peter's Second Letter 1:1 Simon Peter, a servant and apostle of Jesus Christ, to those who have obtained a like precious faith with us in the righteousness of our God and Savior, Jesus Christ: 1:2 Grace to you and peace be multiplied in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord, 1:3 seeing that his divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge... more...

CHAPTER I: GUESSING. "Can you guess," said Louisa to her sister, as they sat at their work in the summer-house, "can you guess what aunt Harding will give us, as a keepsake, before she goes away?" "No, I have not thought about it," said Emma; "and aunt has lately given us so many pretty things, that we can scarcely expect any more for a long time to come. There is my doll... more...

"Nothing around those other suns but ashes and dried blood," old Dunbar told the space-wrecked, desperate men. "Only one way to go, where we can float down through the clouds to Paradise. That's straight ahead to the sun with the red rim around it." But Dunbar's eyes were old and uncertain. How could they believe in his choice when every star in this forsaken section of space... more...