Classics Books

I An observant traveller, homing to England by the Ostend-Dover packet in the April of some five years ago, relished the vagaries of a curious couple who arrived by a later train, and proved to be both of his acquaintance. He had happened to be early abroad, and saw them come on. They were a lady of some personal attraction, comfortably furred, who, descending from a first-class carriage, was met by a... more...

CHAPTER ISMILING SILENCEEvening was in the wood, still as the dreaming bracken, secretive, moving softly among the pines as a young witch gathering simples. She wore a hood of finely woven shadows, yet, though she drew it close, sunbeams trooping westward flashed strange lights across her haunted face. The birds that lived in the wood had broken out into sudden singing as she stole in, hungry for... more...

Light and Shadow Upon entering the house Mr. Westmore divested himself of his great-coat, and stood warming himself by the kitchen fire, while Mrs. Stickles bustled around, smoothing down the bedclothes and putting the room to rights in which her sick husband lay. The kitchen floor was as white as human hands could make it, and the stove shone like polished ebony. Upon this a kettle steamed, while... more...

Hast thou a medicine to restore my wits When I have lost them?--If not, leave to talk. Beaumont and Fletcher; Philaster. In this perplexity, whilst sitting down to clear up his thoughts and to consider of his future motions, Bertram suddenly remembered that immediately before the attack on the revenue officers, a note had been put into his hand--which he had at that time neglected to read under the... more...

CHAPTER I. VÆ VICTIS!  This is undoubtedly the age of humanity—as far, at least, as England is concerned. A man who beats his wife is shocking to us, and a colonel who cannot manage his soldiers without having them beaten is nearly equally so. We are not very fond of hanging; and some of us go so far as to recoil under any circumstances from taking the blood of life. We perform our operations under... more...

FOLK-SONG BY F. B. GUMMERE s in the case of ballads, or narrative songs, it was important to sunder not only the popular from the artistic, but also the ballad of the people from the ballad for the people; precisely so in the article of communal lyric one must distinguish songs of the folk—songs made by the folk—from those verses of the street or the music hall which are often caught up and sung by... more...

FOREWORD. In the first rare spring of song, In my heart's young hours, In my youth 't was thus I sang, Choosing 'mid the flowers:— "Fair the Dandelion is, But for me too lowly; And the winsome Violet Is, forsooth, too holy. 'But the Touchmenot?' Go to! What! a face that's speckled Like a common milking-maid's, Whom the sun hath freckled. Then the Wild-Rose is a... more...

CHAPTER I THE ARRIVAL OF VAL In northern Montana there lies a great, lonely stretch of prairie land, gashed deep where flows the Missouri. Indeed, there are many such—big, impassive, impressive in their very loneliness, in summer given over to the winds and the meadow larks and to the shadows fleeing always over the hilltops. Wild range cattle feed there and grow sleek and fat for the fall shipping... more...

THE TEN COMMANDMENTS. EXODUS 20: 3-17. I. Thou shalt have no other gods before me. II. Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon... more...

In one of Rossetti's invaluable notes on poetry, he tells us that to him "the leading point about Coleridge's work is its human love." We may remember Coleridge's own words:   "To be beloved is all I need,  And whom I love, I love indeed." Yet love, though it is the word which he uses of himself, is not really what he himself meant when using it, but rather an... more...