Classics Books

THE DUMB MAN There is a story.—I cannot tell it.—I have no words. The story is almost forgotten but sometimes I remember. The story concerns three men in a house in a street. If I could say the words I would sing the story. I would whisper it into the ears of women, of mothers. I would run through the streets saying it over and over. My tongue would be torn loose—it would rattle against my teeth.... more...

INTRODUCTION A splendid book in which a soul lives so profoundly human and so purely feminine that any words of introduction seem leaden and intrusive. You feel as though you were violating the essential delicacy and powerful life of this soul to comment upon the remarkable revelation of it between the very covers that contain the revelation. Yet, as a modest friend of letters, I should like to express... more...

CHAPTER I. "My dear Dunshunner," said my friend Robert M'Corkindale as he entered my apartments one fine morning in June last, "do you happen to have seen the share-list? Things are looking in Liverpool as black as thunder. The bullion is all going out of the country, and the banks are refusing to discount." Bob M'Corkindale might very safely have kept his information to... more...

CHAPTER I IN QUARANTINE "The pay is small enough," said Captain Kettle, staring at the blue paper. "It's a bit hard for a man of my age and experience to come down to a job like piloting, on eight pound a month and my grub." "All right, Capt'n," replied the agent. "You needn't tell me what I know already. The pay's miserable, the climate's vile, and... more...

CHAPTER IMISS BOLTWOOD OF BROOKLYN IS LOST IN THE MUD When the windshield was closed it became so filmed with rain that Claire fancied she was piloting a drowned car in dim spaces under the sea. When it was open, drops jabbed into her eyes and chilled her cheeks. She was excited and thoroughly miserable. She realized that these Minnesota country roads had no respect for her polite experience on Long... more...

THE LOVE-LIGHT. Long ago, in the days when our caged blackbirds never saw a king’s soldier without whistling impudently, “Come ower the water to Charlie,” a minister of Thrums was to be married, but something happened, and he remained a bachelor. Then, when he was old, he passed in our square the lady who was to have been his wife, and her hair was white, but she, too, was still unmarried. The... more...

It began with the dead cat on the fire escape and ended with the green monster in the incinerator chute, but still, it wouldn't be quite fair to blame it all on the neighborhood.... The apartment house was in the heart of the district that is known as "The Tenderloin"—that section of San Francisco from Ellis to Market and east from Leavenworth to Mason Street. Not the best section. To... more...

A WANDERER. "There's no such word."—BULWER. A wind was blowing through the city. Not a gentle and balmy zephyr, stirring the locks on gentle ladies' foreheads and rustling the curtains in elegant boudoirs, but a chill and bitter gale that rushed with a swoop through narrow alleys and forsaken courtyards, biting the cheeks of the few solitary wanderers that still lingered abroad in... more...

This book was not made; it has grown. When three years ago I left the pulpit to engage in literary work and took my seat among the laity in the pews, I found that many ecclesiastical and religious subjects presented a different aspect from that which they had presented when I saw them from the pulpit. I commenced in the CHRISTIAN UNION, in a series of "Letters from a Layman," to discuss from my... more...

INTRODUCTORY In one of the cable tramway cars which, at a reverential pace, perambulate the city of Edinburgh, two citizens conversed. The winds without blew gustily and filled the air with sounds like a stream in flood, the traffic clattered noisily over the causeway, the car itself thrummed and rattled; but the voices of the two were hushed. Said the one— "It's the most extraordinary thing... more...