Classics Books

GEORGE WASHINGTON MCKINLEY JONES. Scratch! scratch! scratch! went Colonel Austin's pen over the smooth white sheets of paper, sheet after sheet. The dead heat of Tampa hung heavy within the tent; the buzz of the flies was most distressing; but the reports must be got off, and after them there were letters to be written to "the Boy and his Mother" up North, telling them—especially the... more...

CHAPTER I LANCE LOVELACE When I first found employment with Lance Lovelace, a Texas cowman, I had not yet attained my majority, while he was over sixty. Though not a native of Texas, "Uncle Lance" was entitled to be classed among its pioneers, his parents having emigrated from Tennessee along with a party of Stephen F. Austin's colonists in 1821. The colony with which his people reached... more...

A DEFENCE OF PENNY DREADFULS One of the strangest examples of the degree to which ordinary life is undervalued is the example of popular literature, the vast mass of which we contentedly describe as vulgar. The boy's novelette may be ignorant in a literary sense, which is only like saying that a modern novel is ignorant in the chemical sense, or the economic sense, or the astronomical sense; but... more...

Mrs. Gereth had said she would go with the rest to church, but suddenly it seemed to her that she should not be able to wait even till church-time for relief: breakfast, at Waterbath, was a punctual meal, and she had still nearly an hour on her hands. Knowing the church to be near, she prepared in her room for the little rural walk, and on her way down again, passing through corridors and observing... more...

In the town of Roxbury, among the western Catskills, was born April 3, 1837, John Burroughs. The house in which he first saw the light was an unpainted, squarish structure, only a single story high, with a big chimney in the middle. This house was removed a few years later, and a better and somewhat larger one, which still stands, was built in its place. The situation is very pleasing. Roundabout is a... more...

CHAPTER I THE BLACK PATCH Considering it was nearly the height of the London winter season, the Great Empire Hotel was not unusually crowded. This might perhaps have been owing to the fact that two or three of the finest suites of rooms in the building had been engaged by Mark Fenwick, who was popularly supposed to be the last thing in the way of American multi-millionaires. No one knew precisely who... more...

I. Childhood I was born a slave; but I never knew it till six years of happy childhood had passed away. My father was a carpenter, and considered so intelligent and skilful in his trade, that, when buildings out of the common line were to be erected, he was sent for from long distances, to be head workman. On condition of paying his mistress two hundred dollars a year, and supporting himself, he was... more...

THE HERITAGE OF DEDLOW MARSH. The sun was going down on the Dedlow Marshes. The tide was following it fast as if to meet the reddening lines of sky and water in the west, leaving the foreground to grow blacker and blacker every moment, and to bring out in startling contrast the few half-filled and half-lit pools left behind and forgotten. The strong breath of the Pacific fanning their surfaces at times... more...

CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION--THE MEANING OF LITERATUREHold the hye wey, and lat thy gost thee lede.            Chaucer'sTruth     On, on, you noblest English, ...    Follow your spirit.                Shakespeare'sHenry V The Shell and the Book. A child and a man were one day walking on the seashore when the child found a little shell and held it to his ear.... more...

PREFACE. I delayed these pages some weeks in order to give Mr. Romanes an opportunity of explaining his statement that Canon Kingsley wrote about instinct and inherited memory in Nature, Jan. 18, 1867.   I wrote to the Athenæum (Jan. 26, 1884) and pointed out that Nature did not begin to appear till nearly three years after the date given by Mr. Romanes, and that there was nothing from Canon Kingsley... more...