Classics Books

n other eras he might have been described as swacked, stewed, stoned, smashed, crocked, cockeyed, soused, shellacked, polluted, potted, tanked, lit, stinko, pie-eyed, three sheets in the wind, or simply drunk. In his own time, Major Joseph Mauser, Category Military, Mid-Middle Caste, was drenched. Or at least rapidly getting there. He wasn't happy about it. It wasn't that kind of a binge. He... more...

Chapter I. In Which I Am Late For School. On a certain bright morning in the month of May, 1843, the little port of Stromness wore an aspect of unwonted commotion. The great whaling fleet that every year sailed from this place for the Greenland fisheries was busily preparing for sea. The sun was shining over the brown hills of Orphir, and casting a golden sheen over the calm bay. Out beyond the Holms... more...

I "Stephen K. Lepper, Pork-Packing Prince, from Chicago, U. S. A., by White Star Line, for Liverpool." Such was the announcement with which the Chicago Central Advertiser made beautiful its list of arrivals and departures. It was not exactly a definition of him. To be sure, if you had caught sight of him anywhere down the sumptuous vista of the first-class sleeping-saloon of the New York and... more...

PREFACE ELIZA ORZESZKO In Lord Palmerston's days, the English public naturally heard a great deal about Poland, for there were a goodly number of Poles, noblemen and others, residing in London, exiles after the unsuccessful revolution, who, believing that England would help them to recover their lost liberty, made every possible effort to that end through Count Vladislas Zamoyski, the prime... more...

Chapter I Vacation Plans Charley Russell sat before a table in the workshop in his father's back yard. In front of him were the shining instruments of his wireless outfit--his coupler, his condenser, his helix, his spark-gap, and the other parts, practically all of which he had made with his own hands. Ordinarily he would have looked at them fondly, but now he gave them hardly a thought. He was... more...

Near where St. Abb stretches, in massive strength, into the sea, still terrible, even in ruins, may be seen the remains of Fast Castle, one of the most interesting in its history—as it is the most fearfully romantic in its situation—of all the mouldering strongholds which are still to be traced among the Borders, like monuments of war, crumbling into nothingness beneath the silent but destroying... more...

On the Upper DeckSic itur ad astra.One morning in December the steamer Tabo was laboriously ascending the tortuous course of the Pasig, carrying a large crowd of passengers toward the province of La Laguna. She was a heavily built steamer, almost round, like the tabú from which she derived her name, quite dirty in spite of her pretensions to whiteness, majestic and grave from her leisurely motion.... more...

I "Her cheeks were flushed delicately with the soft pink of the lichen flowers that bloom in the rare days of early summer. Her eyes played with a light as elusive, as quick as the golden radiance on the seas." Great excitement prevailed among the members of the tribe. Along a mottled green-and-brown stretch of shore, which rolled undulatingly toward the icy fringe of the polar sea, more than... more...

PREFACE. When Mr. Carlyle endeavoured to introduce Jean Paul Richter to the English public, it seems to us that he was more than usually unsuccessful. The literary publics of the England and the Germany of those days were very different, and perhaps the errors of taste, which each professed to find in the other, were not in truth wholly upon the side of John Bull. We feel, (with much deprecation of our... more...

I Never say you know the last words about any human heart! I was once treated to a revelation which startled and touched me in the nature of a person with whom I had been acquainted—well, as I supposed—for years, whose character I had had good reasons, heaven knows, to appreciate and in regard to whom I flattered myself I had nothing more to learn. It was on the terrace of the Kursaal at Homburg,... more...