Classics Books

Nothing more generally or more recurrently solicits us, in the light of literature, I think, than the interest of our learning how the poet, the true poet, and above all the particular one with whom we may for the moment be concerned, has come into his estate, asserted and preserved his identity, worked out his question of sticking to that and to nothing else; and has so been able to reach us and touch... more...

PREFACE. HE object of this book is to explain the modern systems of Book and Newspaper Illustration, and especially the methods of drawing for what is commonly called “process,” on which so many artists are now engaged. There is almost a revolution in illustration at the present time, and both old and young—teachers and scholars—are in want of a handbook for reference when turning to the new... more...

A severe storm had been raging all day, and now, in the approaching twilight, seemed as if it would overleap all bounds in its wild confusion. Straight from the North Sea, over the broad Lüneburg heath, it came rushing along, and beat against the gray walls of the manor-house, shook the great elms in the garden, tossed about the bushes, and blew from the bare branches the last yellow leaf yet spared... more...

CHAPTER I. 1862. CAMP WILLIAMS TO ANTIETAM. The regiment was recruited in Hartford county, and its services were tendered to the National Government in response to the President's call for three hundred thousand volunteers for three years. It was almost entirely made up of men in the county, and of excellent material,—some of the oldest and best families were represented in its ranks; and... more...

CHAPTER I. A Word to Donald.—The Scotch Anecdote and its Character.—The Scotch painted by Themselves. h! my dear Donald, what good stories you told me in the few months that I had the pleasure of passing with you! How you stuffed and saturated me with them! And the English pretend that nobody laughs in Scotland! Don't they though! and with the right sort of laughter, too: a laugh that is... more...

CHAPTER I DOG-BITE I "And yet," Edward Henry Machin reflected as at six minutes to six he approached his own dwelling at the top of Bleakridge, "and yet—I don't feel so jolly after all!" The first two words of this disturbing meditation had reference to the fact that, by telephoning twice to his stockbrokers at Manchester, he had just made the sum of three hundred and forty-one... more...

CHAPTER I When Mr. O'Callaghan died, after a long, severe, and expensive sickness, he left to his widow a state of unlimited poverty and seven boys. "Sure, an' sivin's the parfect number," she said through her tears as she looked round on her flock; "and Tim was the bist man as iver lived, may the saints presarve him an' rist him from his dreadful pains!" Thus did... more...

A HISTORY OF THE TOWN OF FAIRFAX When man reaches out into space to explore a new planet, his adventure will be comparable in many ways to that of the colonists who braved the space of water in the early seventeenth century to establish their proprietary rights on a strange continent called "America". These colonists found themselves confronted with the need to feed, house and clothe themselves... more...

CHAPTER I. "That child," said my aunt Mercy, looking at me with indigo-colored eyes, "is possessed." When my aunt said this I was climbing a chest of drawers, by its knobs, in order to reach the book-shelves above it, where my favorite work, "The Northern Regions," was kept, together with "Baxter's Saints' Rest," and other volumes of that sort, belonging to my... more...

INTRODUCTION Between those last precise accounts of military engagements which antiquity has left us in small number, and what may be called the modern history of war, there lies a period of many centuries—quite 1400 years—during which the details of an action and even the main features of a campaign are never given us by contemporary recorders. Through all that vast stretch of time we are... more...