Classics Books

CHAPTER I This book attempts to trace the varying but persistent course of Liberalism in British politics during the last hundred and fifty years. It is not so much a history of events as a reading of them in the light of a particular political philosophy. In the strict sense a history of Liberalism should cover much more than politics. The same habit of mind is to be discovered everywhere else in the... more...

CHAPTER I. THE BIRTH OF AN IDEA. Sunk far back in the huge leather cushions of his morris chair, old Isaac Flint was thinking, thinking hard. Between narrowed lids, his hard, gray eyes were blinking at the morning sunlight that poured into his private office, high up in the great building he had reared on Wall Street. From his thin lips now and then issued a coil of smoke from the costly cigar he was... more...

CHAPTER I. Departure—The Atlantic—Demoralization of the “Boarders”—Betting—The Auctioneer—An Inquisitive Yankee. On board the “Celtic,” Christmas Week, 1889. In the order of things the Teutonic was to have sailed to-day, but the date is the 25th of December, and few people elect to eat their Christmas dinner on the ocean if they can avoid it; so there are only twenty-five saloon... more...

HOW I GOT THEM. 1882-89. True stories are not often good art. The relations and experiences of real men and women rarely fall in such symmetrical order as to make an artistic whole. Until they have had such treatment as we give stone in the quarry or gems in the rough they seldom group themselves with that harmony of values and brilliant unity of interest that result when art comes in—not so much to... more...

“In the West Countree.” “Take care, Mr Luke Vine, sir. There’s a big one coming.” The thin, little, sharp-featured, grey-haired man on a rock looked sharply round, saw the big one coming, stooped, picked up a large basket, and, fishing-rod in hand, stepped back and climbed up a few feet, just as a heavy swell, which seemed to glide along rapidly over the otherwise calm sea, heaved, flooded... more...

In the fifth part of Ludwig Traube's Palaeographische Forschungen, (which I had the honor of publishing after that great scholar's death) evidence was presented for Traube's apparently certain discovery of the very handwriting of John the Scot. In manuscripts of Reims, of Laon, and of Bamberg, he had observed certain marginal notes which were neither omitted sections nor glosses, but... more...

I I have seen the improbable turn true too often not to have it disturb me. Suppose these memoirs still exist when the French royalist plot of 1805 and my father's peculiar role in it are forgotten. I cannot help but remember it is a restless land across the water. But surely people will continue to recollect. Surely these few pages, written with the sole purpose of explaining my father's... more...

CHAPTER I. THE BOY AT THE BARONY The Quintards had not prospered on the barren lands of the pine woods whither they had emigrated to escape the malaria of the low coast, but this no longer mattered, for the last of his name and race, old General Quintard, was dead in the great house his father had built almost a century before and the thin acres of the Barony, where he had made his last stand against... more...

CHAPTER I "I am," said Reggie Mann, "quite beside myself to meet this LucyDupree." "Who told you about her?" asked Allan Montague. "Ollie's been telling everybody about her," said Reggie. "It sounds really wonderful. But I fear he must have exaggerated." "People seem to develop a tendency to exaggeration," said Montague, "when they talk about... more...

THE MORNING VISIT A sick man's chamber, though it often boastThe grateful presence of a literal toast,Can hardly claim, amidst its various wealth,The right unchallenged to propose a health;Yet though its tenant is denied the feast,Friendship must launch his sentiment at least,As prisoned damsels, locked from lovers' lips,Toss them a kiss from off their fingers' tips. The morning... more...