Classics Books

THE AMERICAN GUIDETOPEKA, KANSAS EX SLAVE STORYOTTAWA, KANSASBY: Leta Gray (interviewer) "My name is Clayton Holbert, and I am an ex slave. I am eighty-six years old. I was born and raised in Linn County, Tennessee. My master's name was Pleasant "Ples" Holbert. My master had a fairly large plantation; he had, I imagine, around one hundred slaves." "I was working the fields... more...

CHAPTER I THE JOURNEY The Duchess of Banford and her two children were driving toward their villa, when, owing to the roughness of the road, the front wheel of their coach was suddenly broken. Considerably frightened, mother and children quickly alighted. The approaching darkness, coupled with the loneliness of the place, added to the difficulty; for the prospect of spending the night in the woods was... more...

CHAPTER I. TWO BLACK EYES AND THEIR WORK. he early express train from Montreal to Portland, Maine, was crowded. Mr. Richard Gilbert, lawyer, of New York, entering five minutes before starting time, found just one seat unoccupied near the door. A crusty old farmer held the upper half, and moved grumpily toward the window, under protest, as Mr. Gilbert took the place. The month was March, the morning... more...

SHOWING, BY WAY OF INTRODUCTION, HOW RED EAGLE HAPPENED TO BE A MAN OF CONSEQUENCE IN HISTORY. It is a long journey from the region round about the great lakes, where Tecumseh lived, to the shores of the Alabama and the Tombigbee rivers, even in these days of railroads and steamboats; and it was a much longer journey when Tecumseh was a terror to the border and an enemy whom the United States had good... more...

DEDICATION   Take thou this gift from out the grave of Time.  The urns of Greece lie shattered, and the cup  That for Athenian lips the Muses filled,  And flowery crowns that on Athenian hair  Hid the cicala, freedom's golden sign,  Dust in the dust have fallen. Calmly sad,  The marble dead upon Athenian tombs  Speak from their eyes "Farewell": and well have fared  They... more...

TROUBLE'S TUMBLE "Say, Jan, this isn't any fun!" "What do you want to play then, Ted?" Janet Martin looked at her brother, who was dressed in one of his father's coats and hats while across his nose was a pair of spectacles much too large for him. Janet, wearing one of her mother's skirts, was sitting in a chair holding a doll. "Well, I'm tired of playing... more...

On a delightful evening in the month of July, 1881, table d'hôte being over, my friend S—— and myself were seated under the verandah of the hotel d'Angleterre at Chamonix; there were many others besides ourselves, chiefly English and Americans, grouped in parties, some taking their coffee, others smoking, and all devoting their attention to the summit of Mont Blanc whose diadem of snow... more...

I ASHES OF EMPIRE In point of age, Gaston the strenuous was still no more than a lusty infant among the cities of the brown plain when the boom broke and the junto was born, though its beginnings as a halt camp ran back to the days of the later Mormon migrations across the thirsty plain; to that day when the advanced guard of Zophar Smith's ox-train dug wells in the damp sands of Dry Creek and... more...

CHAPTER THE FIRST AN ALTERED WORLD I It was on a blustering March morning in 1919 that Tabs regained his freedom. His last five months had been spent among doctors, having sundry bullets extracted from his legs. He walked with a limp which was not too perceptible unless he grew tired. His emotions were similar to those of a man newly released from gaol: he felt dazed, vaguely happy and a little lost.... more...

CHAPTER I. WHY ROBERT WYNN EMIGRATED.night train drew up slowly alongside the platform at the Euston Square terminus. Immediately the long inanimate line of rail-carriages burst into busy life: a few minutes of apparently frantic confusion, and the individual items of the human freight were speeding towards all parts of the compass, to be absorbed in the leviathan metropolis, as drops of a shower in a... more...