Classics Books

"Wae's me for Prince Chairlie."Old Scotch Song.It was a dark gloomy night in the year 1745. Huge clouds hung in heavy masses over the sky, ready to discharge their heavy burden at any moment. The thunder echoed and re-echoed with deafening crashes, as if the whole artillery of heaven were arrayed in mighty warfare, and shook even the giant crag on which the castle of Dunmorton was situated.... more...

CHAPTER I. HOW A PARTY OF TRAVELLERS SET OUT ON A JOURNEY. The train for the North was about to start from Madrid, and the station was filled with the usual varied and bustling crowd. Throngs of soldiers were there; throngs of priests; throngs of civilians; throngs of peasants; all moving to and fro, intermingled with the railway employés, and showing the power of steam to stir up even the lazy... more...

WOMAN AS GOD MADE HER. The biography of our first parents, as God made them, and described them, before sin ruined them, is very brief and truly suggestive. It is as follows:— "And Jehovah God created the man in his image; in the image of God created he him; a male and a female created he them. And God blessed them; and God said to them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue... more...

"What was it that Obed saw?" That question used to be asked by chimney-corners in the great farm-houses of an old New England neighborhood for many years. For Obed in his boyhood on a certain last night of October, "when the moon was round," had seen a spectacle the account of which filled the minds of many good people with wonder and of simple people with terror. Even the cats and dogs... more...

I Distant a few miles from the southern extremity of Lago Maggiore, the castle-crowned heights of Anghera and Arona face one another from opposite sides of the lake, separated by a narrow stretch of blue water. Though bearing the name of the former burgh, it was in Arona[1], where his family also possessed a property, that Pietro Martire d'Anghera first saw the light, in the year 1457[2]. He was... more...

Michelangelo's Shoulder It dawned hot in Georgia. Don rubbed his head and blinked. He got out of bed and paused before a makeshift easel where a drawing, taped to a board, showed a woman sitting on a park bench. She was large, dressed in layers of multi-colored cotton. She reminded him of the Renoir woman in her plush living room, the dog sprawled at her feet, but she was smarter. The line across... more...

CHAPTER I.A GIRL WITH A CHARACTER.It was a strange place for an intelligence office, yet Madame Selini evidently knew what she was doing when she established her office in an aristocratic neighborhood, and actually next door to the family mansion of the Countess Dowager of Barewood. The worthy countess was shocked, and, taking counsel of her hopes, predicted that Madame Selini's institution would... more...

Prudence urges me here to forestall detection, by conceding that this brief play has no pretension to "literary" quality. It is a piece in its inception designed for, and in its making swayed by, the requirements of the little theatre stage. The one virtue which anybody anywhere could claim for The Jewel Merchants is the fact that it "acts" easily and rather effectively. And candor... more...

THE MUSICAL SEASON.   'The English are not a musical people.' The dictum long stood unquestioned, and, in general estimation, unquestionable. All the world had agreed upon it. There could be no two opinions: we had no national airs; no national taste; no national appreciation of sweet sounds; musically, we were blocks! At length, however, the creed began to be called in question—were we so... more...

ELDER CONKLIN. As soon as the Elder left the supper-table his daughter and the new schoolmaster went out on the stoop or verandah which ran round the frame-house. The day had been warm, but the chilliness of the evening air betokened the near approach of the Indian summer. The house stood upon the crest of what had been a roll in the prairie, and as the two leant together on the railing of the stoop,... more...