Classics Books

CHAPTER I.THE MAN WITH THE BANNER. The history of Edward Arundel, second son of Christopher Arundel Dangerfield Arundel, of Dangerfield Park, Devonshire, began on a certain dark winter's night upon which the lad, still a schoolboy, went with his cousin, Martin Mostyn, to witness a blank–verse tragedy at one of the London theatres. There are few men who, looking back at the long story of their... more...

CHAPTER I A RASH PROMISE He didn't want to go. He loathed the very thought of it. Every flinching nerve in him protested. A masked ball—a masked ball at a Cairo hotel! Grimacing through peep-holes, self-conscious advances, flirtations ending in giggles! Tourists as nuns, tourists as Turks, tourists as God-knows-what, all preening and peacocking! Unhappily he gazed upon the girl who was proposing... more...

I.On the cold and dark Atlantic,The night was growing lateSteamed the maiden ship TitanicCrowded with human freightShe was valued at Ten Million,The grandest ever roamed the seas,Fitted complete to swim the oceanWhen the rolling billows freeze.She bade farewell to EnglandAll dressed in robes of whiteGoing out to plow the briny deep,And was on her western flight;She was now so swiftly glidingIn L Fifty... more...

CHAPTER I. THE EAGLES AT HOME. "After all, fellows, it's good to be back home again." The speaker, Rob Blake, leader of the Eagle Patrol of Boy Scouts, spoke with conviction. He was a "rangy," sun-burned lad of about eighteen, clear-eyed, confident and wiry. His Boy Scout training, too, had made him resourceful beyond his years. "Yes, and it's also good to know that we... more...

The royal yacht had anchored amid a thunder of cannon, and the king had gone ashore. The city was bright with bunting; a thousand whistles blew. Up through the festooned streets His Majesty was escorted between long rows of blue-coated officers, behind which the eager crowds were massed for mile upon mile. Thin wire cables were stretched along the curbs, to hold the people back, but these threatened to... more...

Oberholser's "Bird Life of Louisiana" (La. Dept. Conserv. Bull. 28, 1938), was a notable contribution to the ornithology of the Gulf Coast region and the lower Mississippi Valley, for it gave not only a complete distributional synopsis of every species and subspecies of bird then known to occur in Louisiana but also nearly every record of a Louisiana bird up to 1938. However, at the time... more...

ewis," Martha said. "I want to go home." She didn't look at me. I followed her gaze to Earth, rising in the east. It came up over the desert horizon, a clear, bright star at this distance. Right now it was the Morning Star. It wasn't long before dawn. I looked back at Martha sitting quietly beside me with her shawl drawn tightly about her knees. She had waited to see it also, of... more...

PRELUDE. ALONG the roadside, like the flowers of goldThat tawny Incas for their gardens wrought,Heavy with sunshine droops the golden-rod,And the red pennons of the cardinal-flowersHang motionless upon their upright staves.The sky is hot and hazy, and the wind,Vying-weary with its long flight from the south,Unfelt; yet, closely scanned, yon maple leafWith faintest motion, as one stirs in... more...

CHAPTER I If John Grantham Browne had a fault—which, mind you, I am not prepared to admit—it lay in the fact that he was the possessor of a cynical wit which he was apt at times to use upon his friends with somewhat peculiar effect. Circumstances alter cases, and many people would have argued that he was perfectly entitled to say what he pleased. When a man is worth a hundred and twenty thousand... more...

DICK MAKES A FRIEND The American consul in the small but highly important city of Semlin, in Hungary, was a busy man. He was probably one of the first men in the world who knew how great was the danger of war between Austria-Hungary and the little kingdom of Servia after the assassination of the heir to the Austrian throne in the summer of 1914. Now, since the Austrian ultimatum to Servia had aroused... more...