Classics Books

CHAPTER I The hour was close on midday, but the lamps in Cavendish Square shone with a blurred light through the unnatural gloom. The fog, pouring down from Regent's Park above, was wedged tight in Harley Street like a wad of dirty wool, but in the open space fronting Harcourt House it found room to expand and took on spectral shape; dim forms with floating locks that clung to the stunted trees... more...

Introduction Love of country is a sentiment so universal that it is only on such rare occasions as called this book into being that there is any need of discussing it or justifying it. There is a perfectly absurd statement by Charles Kingsley, in the preface to one of his books, written fifty years ago, in which he says that, while there can be loyalty to a king or a queen, there cannot be loyalty to... more...

Old Deemster Christian of Ballawhaine was a hard man—hard on the outside, at all events. They called him Iron Christian, and people said, "Don't turn that iron hand against you." Yet his character was stamped with nobleness as well as strength. He was not a man of icy nature, but he loved to gather icicles about him. There was fire enough underneath, at which he warmed his old heart when... more...

CHAPTER XXIVTHE TOWER AMONG THE APENNINESIt was in June that the sculptor, Kenyon, arrived on horseback at the gate of an ancient country house (which, from some of its features, might almost be called a castle) situated in a part of Tuscany somewhat remote from the ordinary track of tourists. Thither we must now accompany him, and endeavor to make our story flow onward, like a streamlet, past a gray... more...

I "Ask Mr. Hume to come here for a moment, Gosse," said Field, the chief factor, as he turned from the frosty window of his office at Fort Providence, one of the Hudson's Bay Company's posts. The servant, or more properly, Orderly-Sergeant Gosse, late of the Scots Guards, departed on his errand, glancing curiously at his master's face as he did so. The chief factor, as he turned... more...

CHAPTER I. The huge London church was crowded in every part, and men had been standing in the aisles from the first moment that the service began. The preacher who had attracted so huge a crowd at two-thirty on a weekday afternoon, was one of the very youngest of the "coming men" of the English church. Tall, thin, with a magnificent head crowned by a mane of hair that was fast becoming... more...

THE NEWCOMER Ridgley School, with its white buildings set comfortably among the maples and the oaks that crown the flat top of the hill a mile to the west of the village of Hamilton, attracts and holds the attention of all eyes that fall upon it. Partly perhaps because the dormitories and the recreation halls fit into the landscape and do not jut boldly and crudely above the trees—as so many... more...

CHAPTER I THE battle was over, and the victor remained on the field—sitting alone with the hurly-burly of his thoughts. His triumph was so sweeping and comprehensive as to be somewhat shapeless to the view. He had a sense of fascinated pain when he tried to define to himself what its limits would probably be. Vistas of unchecked, expanding conquest stretched away in every direction. He held at his... more...

It was one of those exquisite days that come in every winter, in which it seems no longer the dead body, but the lovely ghost of summer. Such a day bears to its sister of the happier time something of the relation the marble statue bears to the living form; the sense it awakes of beauty is more abstract, more ethereal; it lifts the soul into a higher region than will summer day of lordliest splendour.... more...

John Tatham, barrister-at-law, received one summer morning as he sat at breakfast the following letter. It was written in what was once known distinctively as a lady's hand, in pointed characters, very fine and delicate, and was to this effect:—   "Dear John, Have you heard from Elinor of her new prospects and intentions? I suppose she must have written to you on the subject. Do you know... more...