Classics Books

The Latest Viewpoints of Men Worth While An Old Business Man Testifies to the Progress the World Has Made Since Seventy Years Ago—Lewis Carroll's Advice on Mental Nutrition—Rudyard Kipling Defines What Literature Is—Richard Mansfield Holds That All Men Are Actors—Professor Thomas Advances Reasons for Spelling-Reform—Helen Keller Pictures the Tragedy of Blindness—With Other Expressions... more...

CHAPTER I The author dies, meets with Mercury, and is by him conductedto the stage which sets out for the other world. On the first day of December 1741 I departed this life at my lodgings in Cheapside. My body had been some time dead before I was at liberty to quit it, lest it should by any accident return to life: this is an injunction imposed on all souls by the eternal law of fate, to prevent the... more...

§ 1 On the high land overlooking the distant channel and the hills beyond it, the spring day, set in azure, was laced with gold and green. Gorse bushes flaunted their colour, larch trees hung out their tassels and celandines starred the bright green grass in an air which seemed palpably blue. It made a mist among the trees and poured itself into the ground as though to dye the earth from which... more...

CHAPTER I. PRELIMINARY: TRIESTE TO LISBON. The glory of an explorer, I need hardly say, results not so much from the extent, or the marvels of his explorations, as from the consequences to which they lead. Judged by this test, my little list of discoveries has not been unfavoured of fortune. Where two purblind fever-stricken men plodded painfully through fetid swamp and fiery thorn-bush over the... more...

CHAPTER I "Must I go, must I go,Away into the town?" (Swabian Folk-song.) Franz Vogt was on his way home. He carried a neatly tied-up parcel containing the under-linen and the boots that he had been buying in the town. He had trodden this same road a countless number of times during his life; but now that he must bid good-bye to it so soon, the old familiar surroundings presented themselves to... more...

CHAPTER I THE HOME OF CORNELIA MORAN Never, in all its history, was the proud and opulent city of New York more glad and gay than in the bright spring days of Seventeen-Hundred- and-Ninety-One. It had put out of sight every trace of British rule and occupancy, all its homes had been restored and re-furnished, and its sacred places re-consecrated and adorned. Like a young giant ready to run a race, it... more...

OUTSIDE THE RECORD. In General SessionsCourt Room, June 5, 1896. Dorothy dear: It is over. Warren’s fate is in the hands of the jury. I have done the little I could, but the strain has been almost too much for me. Even now, my heart sinks at the thought that I may have left something undone or failed to see some trap of the District Attorney. For more than two hours I have been sitting here fighting... more...

PREFACE. One fine August bank-holiday many thoughts, more or less connected with the day, prompted me to write this essay, so forcibly did it appear that people required help to make their lives easier and happier. Since then there have been several bank-holidays; and though trade is depressed throughout the country, though financial panic has ruined thousands, yet the demand for beer, spirits, and... more...

I A Revolutionary war raises many strange characters out of the obscurity which is the common lot of humble lives in an undisturbed state of society. Certain individualities grow into fame through their vices and their virtues, or simply by their actions, which may have a temporary importance; and then they become forgotten. The names of a few leaders alone survive the end of armed strife and are... more...

CHAPTER I Murray McTavish was seated at a small table, green-baized, littered with account-books and a profusion of papers. But he was not regarding these things. Instead, his dark, intelligent eyes were raised to the smallish, dingy window in front of him, set in its deep casing of centuries-old logs. Nor was the warm light shining in his eyes inspired by the sufficiently welcome sunlight beyond. His... more...