Classics Books

The study of proverbs is one of exceeding interest and value. By means of it our thoughts travel back through the ages to the childhood of the world, and we see at once how amidst the surroundings that vary so greatly in every age and in every clime the common inherent oneness of humanity asserts itself: how, while fashions change, motives of action remain; how, beneath the burning sun of Bengal or... more...

FINNISH ARTSORSIR THOR AND DAMSEL THURE. Sir Thor was a knight of prowess tried,The son of a king he was beside. He was a knight excelled by none,At home such deeds of might he’d done. And not alone in his native home,But manhood had he displayed at Rome. He faithfully served the emperor,And hatred to all his foes he bore. King of Norroway was his sire,His fame spreads over the world entire. He was a... more...

CHAPTER I. The Ortl'er is the Mont Blanc of the Tyrol, and seen from Nauders, a village on a green, grassy table land, more than four thousand feet above the sea, can well bear comparison with the boldest of the Swiss Alps. Nauders itself, a type of a Tyroler village, is situated in a wild and lonely region; it has all the picturesque elegance and neat detail of which Tyrolers are so lavish in... more...

THE CRIPPLE; OR, EBENEZER THE DISOWNED. It is proverbial to say, with reference to particular constitutions or habits of body, that May is a trying month, and we have known what it is to experience its trials in the sense signified. With our grandmothers too, yea, and with our grandfathers also, May was held to be an unlucky month. Nevertheless, it is a lovely, it is a beautiful month, and the... more...

CHAPTER I. It is with some degree of awe that I touch upon the enigma of my impressions at the commencement of my life. I am almost doubtful whether they had reality within my own experience, or whether they are not, rather, recollections mysteriously transmitted—I feel an almost sacred hesitation when I would fathom their depths. I came forth from the darkness of unconsciousness very gradually, for... more...

CHAPTER I. THE LOST CHILD. That portion of North-western Ohio, situated to the South-east of the Black Swamp, was but sparsely settled at the close of the first quarter of the present century. The hardy pioneers who had left their New England homes to open up the Western wilds, here and there built their modest dwellings and tilled the few acres won from the dense forest and luxuriant prairie. The... more...

The writer has published so much truth which the world has insisted was fiction, and so much fiction which has been received as truth, that, in the present instance, he is resolved to say nothing on the subject. Each of his readers is at liberty to believe just as much, or as little, of the matter here laid before him, or her, as may suit his, or her notions, prejudices, knowledge of the world, or... more...

nder the glow of Saturn and his Rings, five of the airdomes of the new colony on Titan were still inflated. They were enormous bubbles of clear, flexible plastic. But the sixth airdome had flattened. And beneath its collapsed roof, propped now by metal rods, a dozen men in spacesuits had just lost all hope of rescuing the victims of the accident. Bert Kraskow, once of Oklahoma City, more recently a... more...

CHAPTER I. Ou peut-on etre mieux qu'au sein de sa famille?—French Song. [Where can on be better than in the bosom of one's family?] I am an only child. My father was the younger son of one of our oldest earls; my mother the dowerless daughter of a Scotch peer. Mr. Pelham was a moderate whig, and gave sumptuous dinners; Lady Frances was a woman of taste, and particularly fond of diamonds and... more...

CHAPTER I.   If you take the turn to the left, after you pass the lyke-gate at Combehurst Church, you will come to the wooden bridge over the brook; keep along the field-path which mounts higher and higher, and, in half a mile or so, you will be in a breezy upland field, almost large enough to be called a down, where sheep pasture on the short, fine, elastic turf. You look down on Combehurst and its... more...