Classics Books

LITTLE MOTHER. One day Kitty's mother called her little daughter to her, and taking both her dimpled dots of hands in her own soft white ones, said, "Kitty, my darling, I am going to New York this morning, to see your dear grandma', and I shall have to leave the house in your charge until I come back. Do you think you can be my little housekeeper for to-day?" "Oh yes, mamma! I... more...

CHAPTER I. Just where the red track of the Los Gatos road streams on and upward like the sinuous trail of a fiery rocket until it is extinguished in the blue shadows of the Coast Range, there is an embayed terrace near the summit, hedged by dwarf firs. At every bend of the heat-laden road the eye rested upon it wistfully; all along the flank of the mountain, which seemed to pant and quiver in the... more...

ETIQUETTE AND ITS USES. THERE are a great many people, in other respects perfectly estimable (which makes the complaint against them the more grievous) who maintain that the laws of nature are the only laws of binding force among the units which compose society. They do not assert their doctrine in so many words, but practically they avow it, and they are not slow to express their contempt for the... more...

Elements of colonial slavery.—By the middle of the seventeenth century, the settlements made in America by the English, Dutch, and Swedes were arranged for the most part in a line of little colonies closely following the Atlantic coast. To the west, wide forests and plains, broken only by the paths of the Indian, stretched on to the Pacific; while long intervals of unpopulated country separated... more...

CHAPTER I NIGHT IN THE WILDERNESS Creek, swish! Creek, swish! hour after hour sounded forth the yielding snowshoes as Keith Steadman, hardy northman and trailsman, strode rapidly forward. For days he had listened to their monotonous music, as he wound his devious way over valleys, plains, and mountain passes, down toward the mighty Yukon River, pulsing on to the sea through the great white silence.... more...

CHAPTER I. AN ENCOUNTER. Juarez was sleepy, very sleepy. He had been traveling on a railroad train for several days, and while ordinarily he could adapt himself to circumstances, traveling by car instead of having a soothing influence as it does with some, seemed to keep him awake. He was thoroughly tired out, and was standing, just now, when our story opens, on dark and lonesome dock in San Francisco.... more...

“Where I come in.” “White dogs!” “Ha! Calves of Matyana, the least of the Great One’s cattle.” “Pups of Tyingoza, the white man’s dog! Au!” “Sweepings of the Abe Sutu!” “Amakafula!” (Kafirs.) Such were but few of the opprobrious phrases, rolled forth alternately, in the clear sonorous Zulu, from alternate sides of the river, which flowed laughing and bubbling on in the... more...

IN THE CHANNEL “By Jove, Jim!” exclaimed Jo Darlington, “but this sea is something fierce! For one I will be mighty glad when we get clear of the Hawaiian channels and out into the open.” “It is lively going,” yelled Jim, above the roar of the wind, as he and his brother Jo were standing together on the bridge of their ship, “but I guess the Sea Eagle will weather it, if we don’t run... more...

CHAPTER I. In the western part of Pennsylvania, near the commencement of the Ohio river, stands a small town, which, at the close of the last century, numbered about thirty dwellings. Although properly a border settlement at the time mentioned, there were so many others beyond, that it was hardly regarded as being in the "Mighty West." The inhabitants were mostly farmers, possessed of large and... more...

CHAPTER I. A DEPARTURE. "Richard, you will keep from drink, will you not, dear?" and the speaker, in order to make her pleading irresistible, kissed the one to whom these words were addressed again and again; and, as with a hand upon each shoulder, she looked lovingly into his eyes, there was an added pathos which, to a man of Richard Ashton's sympathetic and sensitive nature, was all... more...