Classics Books

PROLOGUE When William, Duke of Normandy, invaded England in 1066, and achieved for himself the title of "Conqueror," one of those who accompanied him was Robert D'Evreux, younger son of Walter, Earl of Rosmar, feudal owner and ruler of the town of his name in Normandy. After the battle of Hastings, in which William won so great a victory, he, wishing to honor the memory of the noblemen and... more...

CHAPTER I. A PRACTICAL JOKE. On a cloudy December morning a gentleman, two ladies, and a boy stepped down from the express train at a station just above the Highlands on the Hudson. A double sleigh, overflowing with luxurious robes, stood near, and a portly coachman with difficulty restrained his spirited horses while the little party arranged themselves for a winter ride. Both the ladies were young,... more...

The conscious water saw its Lord and blushed. Abraham Cowley is now less remembered for his poetry than for his pleasant volume of essays, published after the Restoration; but he was thought in his own time a better poet than Milton. His collection of love songs—the Mistress—is a mass of cold conceits, in the metaphysical manner; but his elegies on Crashaw and Harvey have much dignity and natural... more...

PREFACE "Life is the mirror of the king and slave,'Tis just what you are and do.Then give to the world the best you have,And the best will come back to you." I never thought that I should be guilty of writing a book. I did not, however, do this with malice aforethought. My son is responsible for whatever sin I may have committed in presenting this to the public. He and I have been good... more...

INTRODUCTION When the traveller, bent on some important quest, makes a prolonged and perilous journey and returns in safety to his friends and neighbors, instinctively those who have known him in former years realize that he is, and he is not, the same person who had dwelt among them. He has seen unfamiliar peoples, traversed strange lands, encountered unexpected dangers. Old prepossessions have been... more...

THE UNTRAINED MAN UNDER THIRTY-FIVE  "Since we deserved the name of friends,    And thine effect so lives in me,    A part of mine may live in thee,  And move thee on to noble ends." Every woman has had, at some time in her life, an experience with man in the raw. In reality, one cannot set down with any degree of accuracy the age when his rawness attacks him, or the time when he has... more...

A PATRONESS OF ART I Peter (flourish-in-red) Quick (flourish-in-green) Banta (period-in-blue) is the style whereby he is known to Our Square. Summertimes he is a prop and ornament of Coney, that isle of the blest, whose sands he models into gracious forms and noble sentiments, in anticipation of the casual dime or the munificent quarter, wherewith, if you have low, Philistine tastes or a kind heart,... more...

PREFACE The three little volumes on that Republic of Childhood, the kindergarten, of which this handbook, dealing with the gifts, forms the initial number, might well be called Chips from a Kindergarten Workshop. They are the outcome of talks and conferences on Froebel's educational principles with successive groups of earnest young women here, there, and everywhere, for fifteen years, and... more...

n other eras he might have been described as swacked, stewed, stoned, smashed, crocked, cockeyed, soused, shellacked, polluted, potted, tanked, lit, stinko, pie-eyed, three sheets in the wind, or simply drunk. In his own time, Major Joseph Mauser, Category Military, Mid-Middle Caste, was drenched. Or at least rapidly getting there. He wasn't happy about it. It wasn't that kind of a binge. He... more...

CHAPTER I. THE EVE OF THE WAR. It was a pleasant afternoon in the month of July, 1642, when three young people sat together on a shady bank at the edge of a wood some three miles from Oxford. The country was undulating and picturesque, and a little more than a mile in front of them rose the lofty spire of St. Helen's, Abingdon. The party consisted of two lads, who were about fifteen years of age,... more...