Classics Books

CHAPTER I Nathan Hale's Early Years It is to-day a recognized fact that no life worthy of our reverence, or even a life calculated to awaken our fear, is the result of accident. Whatever may be the character, its basis has been the result of long-developing causes. This the life of Nathan Hale well illustrates. He was born at a time and under influences that were sure to develop the best qualities... more...

PREFACE. This preface shall be a personal explanation. The following book was written during the winter of 1876-77, more than eighteen years ago. Its origin was in this wise: Some of my readers will know that for more than twenty years I have studied the habits of our spider fauna. During the first years of these studies, the thought came to me to write a book for youth wherein my observations should... more...

It had no awareness of time, and so did not know nor concern itself with the millennia that passed since it first drew up the dissolved silicates from the shifting grey remnants of soil and arranged them inside the walls of the thousand green pods that were its body cells, and settled down to wait. Somewhere within its fragile cortex, a tiny pulse of life beat. It was a feeble pulse, to be sure, and... more...

CHAPTER I WHICH IS A PROLOGUE The woman lying huddled on the couch turned her face to the wall and covered it with her hands in a burst of uncontrollable horror. "Oh, that dreadful light!" she moaned. "If it would only go out! It will send me mad. Oh, if it would only go out—only go out!" Her companion made no immediate answer. She stood by the wall, her shoulders slightly hunched,... more...

NATURAE by DOM ARBITER: That which is swiftest may speak first . LIGHTNING: My tardy twin Thunder , resent me not for my swiftness . Bear with me patiently . I was made to streak . Seen as jagged slender strands , flashing boorishly . A snippet of intensity . Tarry for a twinkling , then I?ll away unlike the sun who burns through the life of day . My bolts set afire inconspicuous shrubs of lowlands and... more...

A LOST LOVER. For a great many years it had been understood in Longfield that Miss Horatia Dane once had a lover, and that he had been lost at sea. By little and little, in one way and another, her acquaintances had found out or made up the whole story; and Miss Dane stood in the position, not of an unmarried woman exactly, but rather of having spent most of her life in a long and lonely widowhood. She... more...

OLD GREEK STORIES. A long time ago, when the world was much younger than it is now, people told and believed a great many wonderful stories about wonderful things which neither you nor I have ever seen. They often talked about a certain Mighty Being called Jupiter, or Zeus, who was king of the sky and the earth; and they said that he sat most of the time amid the clouds on the top of a very high... more...

CHAPTER I "For Heaven's sake, Sally, don't say, 'Isn't it hot?' or, 'Did you ever know such weather for April?' or, 'Doesn't it seem as if the mud was just as bad as it used to be before we had the State Road?' again. It is hot. I never did see such weather. The mud is worse if anything. I've said all this several times, and if you can't... more...

THE WOOD-FOLK. Pan led a merrier life than all the other gods together. He was beloved alike by shepherds and countrymen, and by the fauns and satyrs, birds and beasts, of his own kingdom. The care of flocks and herds was his, and for home he had all the world of woods and waters; he was lord of everything out-of-doors! Yet he felt the burden of it no more than he felt the shadow of a leaf when he... more...

I THE TEA-TABLE Angeline's slender, wiry form and small, glossy gray head bent over the squat brown tea-pot as she shook out the last bit of leaf from the canister. The canister was no longer hers, neither the tea-pot, nor even the battered old pewter spoon with which she tapped the bottom of the tin to dislodge the last flicker of tea-leaf dust. The three had been sold at auction that day in... more...