Classics Books

Every Rivermouth boy looks upon the sea as being in some way mixed up with his destiny. While he is yet a baby lying in his cradle, he hears the dull, far-off boom of the breakers; when he is older, he wanders by the sandy shore, watching the waves that come plunging up the beach like white-maned sea-horses, as Thoreau calls them; his eye follows the lessening sail as it fades into the blue horizon,... more...

Vague Hints of possible Trouble. The blazing midsummer sun of South Africa had sunk to within a hand’s breadth of the ridge of the southern spur of the Tandjes Berg, softly outlined in blue some forty miles distant on the western horizon, when I, Edward Laurence, having taken a long afternoon ride round the farm to assure myself that the sheep were being properly looked after, arrived within a mile... more...

INDUSTRIAL DESIGNING. A great many women have, or think they have, a taste for art. They can make a pretty sketch, or draw a landscape quite fairly, and so they think they will "take up" art as a profession. And nearly all of them fail of success. The trouble seems to be that they lack originality; they are mere copyists, and too often very poor reproducers of the things they copy. One branch... more...

Lamentations 1:1 How the city sits solitary, that was full of people!She has become as a widow, who was great among the nations!She who was a princess among the provinces is become tributary!1:2She weeps sore in the night, and her tears are on her cheeks;among all her lovers she has none to comfort her:All her friends have dealt treacherously with her; they are become her enemies.1:3Judah is gone into... more...

CHAPTER I DUKE CASIMIR RIDES LATE Well do I, Hugo Gottfried, remember the night of snow and moonlight when first they brought the Little Playmate home. I had been sleeping—a sturdy, well-grown fellow I, ten years or so as to my age—in a stomacher of blanket and a bed-gown my mother had made me before she died at the beginning of the cold weather. Suddenly something awoke me out of my sleep. So, all... more...

I The morning was as dark and cold as city snow could make it—a dingy whirl at the window; a smoky gust through the fireplace; a shadow black as a bear's cave under the table. Nothing in all the cavernous room, loomed really warm or familiar except a glass of stale water, and a vapid, half-eaten grape-fruit. Packed into his pudgy pillows like a fragile piece of china instead of a human being... more...

Eighteen men and two women in the closed world of a space ship for five months can only spell tension and trouble—but in this case, the atmosphere was literally poisoned.   Five months out from Earth, we were half-way to Saturn and three-quarters of the way to murder. At least, I was. I was sick of the feuding, the worries and the pettiness of the other nineteen aboard. My stomach heaved at the bad... more...

THE FROST SPIRIT He comes,—he comes,—the Frost Spirit comesYou may trace his footsteps nowOn the naked woods and the blasted fields and thebrown hill's withered brow.He has smitten the leaves of the gray old treeswhere their pleasant green came forth,And the winds, which follow wherever he goes,have shaken them down to earth. He comes,—he comes,—the Frost Spirit comes!from the frozen... more...

CHAPTER I. THE UNFINISHED WILL Toward the middle of October, about the time of the beechnut harvest, M. Eustache Destourbet, justice of the Peace of Auberive, accompanied by his clerk, Etienne Seurrot, left his home at Abbatiale, in order to repair to the Chateau of Vivey, where he was to take part in removing the seals on some property whose owner had deceased. At that period, 1857, the canton of... more...

A BOY OF THE WILDERNESS The forest was still. A calm lay upon its vast extent, from the green-capped hills in the east to the noble river which, fed by the streams so quietly meandering through the pleasantly wooded country, found its way to the sea where the greatest city of the New World was destined to stand. The clear, bell-like note of a waking bird startled the morning hush. A doe and her fawn... more...