Classics Books

PART ONE   When Miss Fox-Seton descended from the twopenny bus as it drew up, she gathered her trim tailor-made skirt about her with neatness and decorum, being well used to getting in and out of twopenny buses and to making her way across muddy London streets. A woman whose tailor-made suit must last two or three years soon learns how to protect it from splashes, and how to aid it to retain the... more...

An Unpleasant Discovery "When do you think Allen will be back, Paul?" "He ought to be back by two or three o'clock, Chet. His horse was fresh, and the roads are very good just now." "I hope he brings good news, don't you? I am tired of waiting here." "We will have to content ourselves on the ranch another year, I am afraid. Father left matters in a very unsettled... more...

INTRODUCTION Of all the myths which have come down to us from the East, and of all the creations of Western fancy and belief, the Personality of Evil has had the strongest attraction for the mind of man. The Devil is the greatest enigma that has ever confronted the human intelligence. So large a place has Satan taken in our imagination, and we might also say in our heart, that his expulsion therefrom,... more...

CHAPTER I MRS. CARTER RECEIVES A LETTER "Is that the latest style?" inquired James Leech, with a sneer, pointing to a patch on the knee of Herbert Carter's pants. Herbert's face flushed. He was not ashamed of the patch, for he knew that his mother's poverty made it a necessity. But he felt that it was mean and dishonorable in James Leech, whose father was one of the rich men of... more...

CHAPTER I   "Aujourd'hui le primtetemps, Ninon, demain l'hiver.  Quoi! tu nas pas l'étoile, est tu vas sur la mer!"            DE MUSSET. Count Emile Poleski was obliged to be at the Barcelona Station at five o'clock in the afternoon one hot Friday in May. His business, having to do with that which was known to himself and his associates as "the... more...

Once upon a time there was an old pig with three little pigs, and, as she had not enough to keep them, she sent them out to seek their fortunes. The first that went off met a man with a bundle of straw, and said to him, "Please, man, give me that straw to build me a house;" which the man did, and the little pig built a house with it.   Presently a wolf came along and knocked at the door, and... more...

CHAPTER I LEWES "Lewes is the most romantic situation I ever saw"; thus Defoe, and the capital of Sussex shares with Rye and Arundel the distinction of having a continental picturesqueness more in keeping with old France than with one of the home counties of England. This, however, is only the impression made by the town when viewed as a whole; its individual houses, its churches and castle,... more...

DONALD MACDONALD, M.D. The man came to a stop, a look of humiliation and deep self-disgust on his bronzed face. With methodical care he leaned his rifle against the seamed trunk of a forest patriarch and drew the sleeve of his hunting shirt across his forehead, now glistening with beads of sweat; then, and not until then, did he relieve his injured feelings by giving voice to a short but... more...

CHAPTER I INTRODUCTORY Few literatures have exerted so profound an influence upon the literary history of other peoples as the poetry of the troubadours. Attaining the highest point of technical perfection in the last half of the twelfth and the early years of the thirteenth century, Provençal poetry was already popular in Italy and Spain when the Albigeois crusade devastated the south of France and... more...

WHERE UNION DWELT Beside the deep ravine the cottage stood,O'erlooking elm and willow, beech and birch,In growth profuse and wild o'er shady stream:And viewing cedar, oak and towering pineOn yonder crest aglow with light. How grandThe vision in the greenness of the spring,When birds of blue and scarlet vestments come;The greater glory of the summer time,When twinkling wings outvie the rarest... more...