Classics Books

CHAPTER I BETWEEN THE LINES I had drifted slowly across the river, clinging with one arm thrown over a log, expecting each moment the musket of some startled picket would spit red through the dark, and scarcely daring to guide my unwieldy support by the slightest movement of hand in the water. The splash of motion might mean death in an instant, for keen eyes, sharpened by long night vigils, were on... more...

1861-1862. And now that, in these notes, I have fairly reached the period of the civil war, which ravaged our country from 1861 to 1865—an event involving a conflict of passion, of prejudice, and of arms, that has developed results which, for better or worse, have left their mark on the world's history—I feel that I tread on delicate ground. I have again and again been invited to write a... more...

CHAPTER I. THE VOYAGE. An enthusiastic desire of visiting the Old World haunted me from early childhood. I cherished a presentiment, amounting almost to belief, that I should one day behold the scenes, among which my fancy had so long wandered. The want of means was for a time a serious check to my anticipations; but I could not content myself to wait until I had slowly accumulated so large a sum as... more...

In preparing a list of kinds of mammals of which specimens have been saved from the Méxican state of Michoacán, two heretofore unrecognized subspecies of the Méxican meadow mouse, Microtus mexicanus, have been found. Names for these and descriptions are given below. Microtus mexicanus fundatus new subspecies Type.—Male, adult, skin and skull; No. 100637, Univ. California Mus. Vert. Zool.; 3½ mi.... more...

CHAPTER IBERGERONNETTE For me the strange story dates back to that autumn day when my uncle Dorgeroux appeared, staggering and unhinged, in the doorway of the room which I occupied in his house, Haut-Meudon Lodge. None of us had set eyes on him for a week. A prey to that nervous exasperation into which the final test of any of his inventions invariably threw him, he was living among his furnaces and... more...

INTRODUCTION There is a sacred privacy in the life of a blind person. It is led apart from much of the ordinary work of the world, and is unaffected by many external incidents which help to make up the important events of other lives. It is passed in the shade and not in the open sunlight of eager activity. At first we should be disposed to say that such a life, with its inevitable restrictions and... more...

INTRODUCTION Friendship is essentially the same bond, whether it unites persons of intellect and refined tastes, or those more unfortunate ones, who, perhaps, have no conception of their mission in the world, or of their duty to society. Its manifestations may be wholly different, but the two friendships will have some points in common. In both instances the friends are drawn close together and are... more...

Honore de Balzac is known to the world in general as a novel-writer, a producer of romances, in which begin the reign of realism in French fiction. His Comedie Humaine is a description of French society, as it existed from the time of the Revolution to that of the Restoration. In this series of stories we find the author engaged in analyzing the manners, motives and external life of the French man and... more...

In the summers of 1951 and 1952 some data on birds were gathered incidental to a study of the mammals of the Arctic Slope of northern Alaska (see Bee and Hall—Mammals of Northern Alaska ..., Univ. Kansas Mus. Nat. Hist., Miscl. Publ., 8, March 10, 1956). Other students, currently preparing comprehensive accounts of the birds of northern Alaska, have urged that the information obtained in 1951 and... more...

CHAPTER I. Early mass was being celebrated in the chapel attached to the royal summer palace. The palace stood on a slight eminence in the center of the park. The eastern slope of the hill had been planted with vineyards, and its crest was covered with mighty, towering beeches. The park abounded with maples, plane-trees and elms, with their rich foliage, and firs of various kinds, while the thick... more...