Classics Books

CHAPTER I. THE EAGLES AT HOME. "After all, fellows, it's good to be back home again." The speaker, Rob Blake, leader of the Eagle Patrol of Boy Scouts, spoke with conviction. He was a "rangy," sun-burned lad of about eighteen, clear-eyed, confident and wiry. His Boy Scout training, too, had made him resourceful beyond his years. "Yes, and it's also good to know that we... more...

The royal yacht had anchored amid a thunder of cannon, and the king had gone ashore. The city was bright with bunting; a thousand whistles blew. Up through the festooned streets His Majesty was escorted between long rows of blue-coated officers, behind which the eager crowds were massed for mile upon mile. Thin wire cables were stretched along the curbs, to hold the people back, but these threatened to... more...

Oberholser's "Bird Life of Louisiana" (La. Dept. Conserv. Bull. 28, 1938), was a notable contribution to the ornithology of the Gulf Coast region and the lower Mississippi Valley, for it gave not only a complete distributional synopsis of every species and subspecies of bird then known to occur in Louisiana but also nearly every record of a Louisiana bird up to 1938. However, at the time... more...

CHAPTER I. The best bed-chamber, with its hangings of crimson moreen, was opened and aired—a performance which always caused my eight little brothers and sisters to place themselves in convenient positions for being stumbled over, to the great annoyance of industrious damsels, who, armed with broom and duster, endeavored to render their reign as arbitrary as it was short. For some time past, the... more...

ewis," Martha said. "I want to go home." She didn't look at me. I followed her gaze to Earth, rising in the east. It came up over the desert horizon, a clear, bright star at this distance. Right now it was the Morning Star. It wasn't long before dawn. I looked back at Martha sitting quietly beside me with her shawl drawn tightly about her knees. She had waited to see it also, of... more...

PRELUDE. ALONG the roadside, like the flowers of goldThat tawny Incas for their gardens wrought,Heavy with sunshine droops the golden-rod,And the red pennons of the cardinal-flowersHang motionless upon their upright staves.The sky is hot and hazy, and the wind,Vying-weary with its long flight from the south,Unfelt; yet, closely scanned, yon maple leafWith faintest motion, as one stirs in... more...

WISDOM IN THE WOODS. I had seen and heard little of Hartman since our college days. There he was counted a youth of eminent promise: after that I knew that he had traveled, written something or other, and practised law—or professed it, and not too eagerly: then he had disappeared. Last May I stumbled on him in a secluded region where I had gone to fish and rest, after a year of too close attention to... more...

CHAPTER I If John Grantham Browne had a fault—which, mind you, I am not prepared to admit—it lay in the fact that he was the possessor of a cynical wit which he was apt at times to use upon his friends with somewhat peculiar effect. Circumstances alter cases, and many people would have argued that he was perfectly entitled to say what he pleased. When a man is worth a hundred and twenty thousand... more...

SIMON THE SOLITARY PASSENGER The train had come a long journey and the afternoon was wearing on. The passenger in the last third class compartment but one, looking out of the window sombrely and intently, saw nothing now but desolate brown hills and a winding lonely river, very northern looking under the autumnal sky. He was alone in the carriage, and if any one had happened to study his movements... more...

INTRODUCTION. There is a passion, or a perversion of appetite, which, like all human passions, has played a considerable part in the world's history for good or evil; but which has hardly yet received the philosophical attention and the scientific investigation it deserves. The reason of this may be that in all Christian societies the passion under consideration has been condemned to pariahdom;... more...