Classics Books

CHAPTER I THE CIRCASSIAN GRAND Miss Lucile Wollaston was set to exude sympathy, like an aphid waiting for an overworked ant to come down to breakfast. But there was no sympathizing with the man who came in from a doctor's all-night vigil like a boy from a ball-game, gave her a hard brisk kiss on the cheek-bone, and then, before taking his place at the table, unfolded the morning paper for a glance... more...

The silver needle moved with fantastic speed, slowed when it neared the air shell around Earth, then glided noiselessly through the atmosphere. It gently settled to the ground near a wood and remained silent and still for a long time, a lifeless, cylindrical, streamlined silver object eight feet long and three feet in diameter. Eventually the cap end opened and a creature of bright blue metal slid from... more...

Checkers I I had never before attended the races. "The sport of kings" is not popular in Boston, my former home, but here in Chicago every one turns out on Derby Day, if at no other time. And so, catching something of the general enthusiasm, my friend Murray Jameson, who by the way is something of a sport, and I, who by the same token am not, found ourselves driving a very smart trap out... more...

INTRODUCTION Yellow bats occur only in the New World and by most recent authors have been referred to the genus Dasypterus Peters. The red bats and the hoary bat, all belonging to the genus Lasiurus Gray, also occur only in the New World except that the hoary bat has an endemic subspecies in the Hawaiian Islands. The kind of yellow bat first to be given a distinctive name was the smaller of the two... more...

or a long time, Henry Bemis had had an ambition. To read a book. Not just the title or the preface, or a page somewhere in the middle. He wanted to read the whole thing, all the way through from beginning to end. A simple ambition perhaps, but in the cluttered life of Henry Bemis, an impossibility. Henry had no time of his own. There was his wife, Agnes who owned that part of it that his employer, Mr.... more...

CHAPTER IA COLT IS BORN It was high noon in the desert, but there was no dazzling sunlight. Over the earth hung a twilight, a yellow-pink softness that flushed across the sky like the approach of a shadow, covering everything yet concealing nothing, creeping steadily onward, yet seemingly still, until, pressing low over the earth, it took on changing color, from pink to gray, from gray to black–gloom... more...

DEDICATORY SERMON. BY REV. MARY BAKER EDDY, First pastor of The First Church of Christ, Scientist, Boston, Mass.,Delivered Jan. 6, 1895. TEXT—Psalms xxxvi, 8. "They shall be abundantly satisfied with the fatness of thy house; and thou shalt make them drink of the river of thy pleasures." A new year is a nursling, a babe of time, a prophecy and promise clad in white raiment,... more...

INTRODUCTION "A work of art is first cloudily conceived in the mind; during the period of gestation it stands more clearly forward from these swaddling mists, puts on expressive lineaments, and becomes at length that most faultless, but also, alas! that incommunicable product of the human mind, a perfected design. On the approach to execution all is changed. The artist must now step down, don his... more...

LETTER XIV. DUCLER—ST. GEORGES DE BOCHERVILLE—M. LANGLOIS. (Ducler, July, 1818.) You will look in vain for Ducler in the livre des postes; yet this little town, which is out of the common road of the traveller, becomes an interesting station to the antiquary, it being situated nearly mid-way between two of the most important remains of ancient ecclesiastical architecture in Normandy—the abbeys of... more...

ACT I _The Wood-cutter's Cottage The stage represents the interior of a wood-cutter's cottage, simple and rustic in appearance, but in no way poverty-stricken. A recessed fireplace containing the dying embers of a wood-fire. Kitchen utensils, a cupboard, a bread-pan, a grandfather's clock, a spinning-wheel, a water-tap, etc. On a table, a lighted lamp. At the foot of the cupboard, on... more...