Classics Books

I The morning was as dark and cold as city snow could make it—a dingy whirl at the window; a smoky gust through the fireplace; a shadow black as a bear's cave under the table. Nothing in all the cavernous room, loomed really warm or familiar except a glass of stale water, and a vapid, half-eaten grape-fruit. Packed into his pudgy pillows like a fragile piece of china instead of a human being... more...

The lot of the foreigner in Buenos Ayres during the rainy season is not an enviable one. The Englishman who finds himself in that city when the rain falls for weeks at a time becomes a victim to the spleen, the American to "the blues," the Frenchman to ennui. The houses, built with a view mainly to protection against the torrid heats of summer, are not adapted to shelter their inmates from the... more...

This story, the nineteenth and last of the "Aunt Jane" stories, appeared in the Cosmopolitan, July 1910, after the publication of The Land of Long Ago. Its publication in this present volume completes the set of stories told by "Aunt Jane of Kentucky." "I hear there's goin' to be a circus in town next week," said Aunt Jane, "and if it wasn't for the looks of... more...

JUNE 23, 1863, ended the Army of the Cumberland's six months of wearisome inaction around Murfreesboro its half-year of tiresome fort-building, drilling, picketing and scouting. Then its 60,000 eager, impatient men swept forward in combinations of masterful strategy, and in a brief, wonderfully brilliant campaign of nine days of drenching rain drove Bragg out of his strong fortifications in the... more...

THE POETICAL WORKS OF SAMUEL JOHNSON. THE LIFE OF SAMUEL JOHNSON. We feel considerable trepidation in beginning a life of Johnson, not so much on account of the magnitude of the man—for in Milton, and one or two others, we have already met his match—but on account of the fact that the field has been so thoroughly exhausted by former writers. It is in the shadow of Boswell, the best of all... more...

Lamentations 1:1 How the city sits solitary, that was full of people!She has become as a widow, who was great among the nations!She who was a princess among the provinces is become tributary!1:2She weeps sore in the night, and her tears are on her cheeks;among all her lovers she has none to comfort her:All her friends have dealt treacherously with her; they are become her enemies.1:3Judah is gone into... more...

I. LOOKING INWARD. It is my habit to give an account to myself of the characters I meet with: can I give any true account of my own? I am a bachelor, without domestic distractions of any sort, and have all my life been an attentive companion to myself, flattering my nature agreeably on plausible occasions, reviling it rather bitterly when it mortified me, and in general remembering its doings and... more...

INDUSTRIAL DESIGNING. A great many women have, or think they have, a taste for art. They can make a pretty sketch, or draw a landscape quite fairly, and so they think they will "take up" art as a profession. And nearly all of them fail of success. The trouble seems to be that they lack originality; they are mere copyists, and too often very poor reproducers of the things they copy. One branch... more...

THE OLD BACHELOR'S STORY. In the city block where I live, there are just twenty-four houses on the other side of the street, and twenty-four on this side, six lamp posts, and eight ailanthus trees in green boxes. Oh, dear me, what a tiresome row! That's what I thought when I first came to lodge here; for, as I am an old bachelor, I don't want a whole house to myself; but now, when I sit... more...

CHAPTER I Birth and parentage—studies under Zachow at Halle—Hamburg—friendship and duel with Mattheson—Almira—departure for Italy. The name of Handel suggests to most people the sound of music unsurpassed in massiveness and dignity, and the familiar portraits of the composer present us with a man whose external appearance was no less massive and dignified than his music. Countless anecdotes... more...