Classics Books

CHAPTER ONE JOY IN AMBER SATIN Joy Havenith had no business at all to be curled up on the back stairs under Great-Grand-Aunt Lucilla's picture. She ought to have been sliding sweetly up and down the long double parlors with teacups and cake, and she knew it. But she just didn't care. As a matter of fact, Aunt Lucilla and the other ancestors ought to have been in the parlors, too; but... more...

CHAPTER I Penny Nichols flung open the office door of the Nichols Detective Agency, descending upon a dignified, gray-haired man who was busy at his desk. "Dad," she announced, "I've come to report a mysterious disappearance!" Christopher Nichols dropped the correspondence upon which he was working and regarded his daughter for a moment, his gray eyes flashing an indulgent welcome.... more...

TWO PAIRS OF SHOES I don't exactly know why Cap'n Jonadab and me went to the post-office that night; we wa'n't expecting any mail, that's sartin. I guess likely we done it for the reason the feller that tumbled overboard went to the bottom—'twas the handiest place TO go. Anyway we was there, and I was propping up the stove with my feet and holding down a chair with the... more...

DUTY Back kitchen of a country public house. Micus and Padna seated at a table drinking from pewter pints. Mrs. Cotter enters in response to a call. PADNA (pointing to pint measures)Fill 'em again, ma'am, please. MRS. COTTER (taking pints, and wiping table)Fill 'em again, is it? Indeed I won't do any such thing. MICUSIndeed you will, Mrs. Cotter. MRS. COTTER Don't you know that... more...

INTRODUCTION In the Valhalla of English literature Anne Manning is sure of a little and safe place. Her studies of great men, in which her imagination fills in the hiatus which history has left, are not only literature in themselves, but they are a service to literature: it is quite conceivable that the ordinary reader with no very keen flair for poetry will realise John Milton and appraise him more... more...

MARSTON; OR, THE MEMOIRS OF A STATESMAN. PART II."Have I not in my time heard lions roar?Have I not heard the sea, puft up with wind,Rage like all angry boar chafed with sweat?Have I not heard great ordnance in the field,And heaven's artillery thunder in the skies?Have I not in the pitched battle heardLoud 'larums, neighing steeds, and trumpets clang?" SHAKSPEARE. My entertainer... more...

DREAMS The man, for the first time, stood face to face with Life and, for the first time, knew that he was a man. For a long time he had known that some day he would be a man. But he had always thought of his manhood as a matter of years. He had said to himself: "when I am twenty-one, I will be a man." He did not know, then, that twenty-one years—that indeed three times twenty-one... more...

PREFACE. This Volume contains the argument, drawn from the Plays usually attributed to Shakspere, in support of a theory which the author of it has demonstrated by historical evidences in another work. Having never read this historical demonstration (which remains still in manuscript, with the exception of a preliminary chapter, published long ago in an American periodical), I deem it necessary to cite... more...

STORY I CURLY TWISTYTAIL IS NAMED Once upon a time, not so very many years ago, in the days when there were fairies and giants and all things like that, there lived in a little house, on the edge of a wood, a family of pigs. Now these pigs weren't like the pigs, which perhaps you children have seen on most farms. No, indeed! They were just the nicest cleanest, sweetest pigs you ever dreamed... more...

THE OWNER OF NEW YORK Percy Darrow, a young man of scientific training, indolent manners, effeminate appearance, hidden energy, and absolute courage, lounged through the doors of the Atlas Building. Since his rescue from the volcanic island that had witnessed the piratical murder of his old employer, Doctor Schermerhorn, the spectacular dissolution of the murderers, and his own imprisonment in a cave... more...