Classics Books

INTRODUCTION One of the first facts which strike the traveller in Palestine is the smallness of a country which has nevertheless occupied so large a space in the history of civilised mankind. It is scarcely larger than an English county, and a considerable portion of it is occupied by rocky mountains and barren defiles where cultivation is impossible. Its population could never have been great, and... more...

PREFACE A little book on a great subject, especially when that book is one of a "series," is notoriously an object of literary distrust. For the limitations thus imposed upon the writer are such as few men can satisfactorily cope with, and he must needs ask the indulgence of his readers for his painfully-felt shortcomings in dealing with the mass of material which he has to manipulate. And more... more...

CHAPTER IREADY FOR BUSINESS When the “Big Boss” at Secret Service Headquarters in Washington sent Jack Ralston and his pal, Gabe Perkiser, to Florida with orders to comb the entire Gulf Coast from the Ten Thousand Islands as far north as Pensacola and break up the defiant league of smugglers, great and small, that had for so long been playing a game of hide-and-seek with the Coast Guard revenue... more...

All my life I had dreamed of owning a brook ust below the brow of the hill one of the traces broke (it was in the horse-and-wagon days of a dozen years or so ago), and, if our driver had not been a prompt man our adventure might have come to grief when it was scarcely begun. As it was, we climbed on foot to the top, and waited while he went into a poor old wreck of a house to borrow a string for... more...

DUTY Back kitchen of a country public house. Micus and Padna seated at a table drinking from pewter pints. Mrs. Cotter enters in response to a call. PADNA (pointing to pint measures)Fill 'em again, ma'am, please. MRS. COTTER (taking pints, and wiping table)Fill 'em again, is it? Indeed I won't do any such thing. MICUSIndeed you will, Mrs. Cotter. MRS. COTTER Don't you know that... more...

Chapter I National Characteristics There is in human affairs a reason for everything we see, although not always reason in everything. It is the part of the historian to seek in the archives of a nation the reasons for the facts of common experience and observation, it is the part of the philosopher to moralize upon antecedent causes and present results. Neither of these positions is taken up by the... more...

CARBOONA'S SECRET In an old badger-hole among a maze of bramble-brakes and ancient thickets of thorn and juniper covering the foot of one of Carboona's eastern spurs, one morning very early, as Little-Sweet-Voice, the white-throated sparrow, was singing his earliest song, a great event took place. It was twilight in the badger-hole, and only persons accustomed to odds and ends of day-light... more...

CHAPTER I. The Activities of Nuremberg.—The Dürer Family.—Early Years of Albert.—His Studies with Wohlgemuth.—The Wander-Jahre. The free imperial city of Nuremberg, in the heart of Franconia, was one of the chief centres of the active life of the Middle Ages, and shared with Augsburg the great trans-continental traffic between Venice and the Levant and Northern Europe. Its municipal liberties... more...

THE COVENANT The morning sun was growing stronger as it rose higher. Collie, returning from driving his master's cow to the cool shade of the back pasture, felt its rays penetrate his shaggy coat. His tongue hung out as he padded swiftly up the garden path where already the dew was almost dried from the rows of marigolds and sweet William. He dropped with a sigh in the shadow of the old... more...

PREFACE Of all lines of poultry keeping, duck raising is unique in that it lends itself to the greatest degree of specialization and intensification along lines which are purely commercial. On a comparatively small area thousands of ducklings can be reared and marketed yearly. The call for information concerning the methods used by these commercial duck raisers has been considerable, and since such... more...