Classics Books

CHAPTER I. PREPARATIONS AND PLANS. "It will be another 'sky cruise,' longer and daintier and lovelier!" exclaimed Jess Bancroft, clapping her hands. "Peggy, you're nothing if not original." "Well, there are automobile tours and sailing trips, and driving parties—" "And railroad journeys and mountain tramps—" interrupted Jess, laughing. "Yes, and... more...

CHAPTER I. A NEW VENTURE IN SANDY BEACH. "It isn't to be a barn; that's one thing certain. Who ever saw a barn with skylights on it?" Peggy Prescott, in a pretty, fluffy morning dress of pale green, which set off her blonde beauty to perfection, laid down her racket, and, leaving the tennis-court, joined her brother Roy at the picket fence. The lad, bronzed and toughened by his trip... more...

CHAPTER I DR. TOLBRIDGE It was about the middle of a March afternoon when Dr. Tolbridge, giving his horse and buggy into the charge of his stable boy, entered the warm hall of his house. His wife was delighted to see him; he had not been at home since noon of the preceding day. "Yes," said he, as he took off his gloves and overcoat, "the Pardell boy is better, but I found him in a desperate... more...

The Girl and the Bill CHAPTER I THE THRESHOLD OF ADVENTURE The roar of State Street filled the ears of Robert Orme not unpleasantly. He liked Chicago, felt towards the Western city something more than the tolerant, patronizing interest which so often characterizes the Eastern man. To him it was the hub of genuine Americanism—young, aggressive, perhaps a bit too cocksure, but ever bounding along with... more...

CHAPTER I. THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY. “Roy! Roy! where are you?” Peggy Prescott came flying down the red-brick path, a rustling newspaper clutched in her hand. “Here I am, sis,—what’s up?” The door of a long, low shed at the farther end of the old-fashioned garden opened as a clattering sound of hammering abruptly ceased. Roy Prescott, a wavy-haired, blue-eyed lad of seventeen, or thereabouts,... more...

CHAPTER I.PLANTS AS A SOURCE OF REVENUE. With the single exception of ginseng, the hundred of plants whose roots are used for medical purposes, America is the main market and user. Ginseng is used mainly by the Chinese. The thickly inhabited Chinese Empire is where the American ginseng is principally used. To what uses it is put may be briefly stated, as a superstitious beverage. The roots with certain... more...

His head hurt like blazes, but he was alive, and to be alive meant fighting like hell to stay that way. That was the first thing returning consciousness told him. The next was that his helmet should have been cracked wide open when the bum landing had wrenched the acceleration hammocks out of their suspension sockets and heaved his suited body across the buckled conning deck. It should've been,... more...

THE STEAMBOAT LEVEE Saturday, April, 1852. There was a fervor in the sky as of an August noon, although the clocks of the city would presently strike five. Dazzling white clouds, about to show the earliest flush of the sun's decline, beamed down upon a turbid river harbor, where the water was deep so close inshore that the port's unbroken mile of steamboat wharf nowhere stretched out into the... more...

AN INTERCESSOR. IN the heart of the City, but fended off from the roar and rattle of traffic by a ring of shops, and under the shadow of a smoke-begrimed classical church, stands—or rather stood, for they have removed it recently—the large public school of St. Peter's. Entering the heavy old gate, against which the shops on both sides huddled close, you passed into the atmosphere of scholastic... more...

"Okay, make another check on the reading."Grim terror lurked in the void many light years from Earth. But Pinkham and his men were unaware of it—until suddenly they discovered—The Giants From Outer Space"I've made four checks already—" "Damn it, make another!" "It's no use, Pink. The life-scanner's never wrong." "No possibility of a monkey wrench... more...