Classics Books

PREFACE A careful perusal of this first English translation of the primitive text of "Job," "Koheleth," and the "Sayings of Agur" will, I doubt not, satisfy the most orthodox reader that I am fully warranted in characterising their authors as Sceptics. The epithet, I confess, may prove distasteful to many, but the truth, I trust, will be welcome to all. It is not easy to... more...

CHAPTER I Mrs. Bennet, her travelling companion from San Francisco, having proved to be talkative and uninteresting, Elsie Marley was more than content to find herself alone after the change had been made and her train pulled out of Chicago. It was characteristic of the girl that she did not even look out of the window to see the last of Mrs. Bennet, who, having waited on the platform until the train... more...

Chapter I Introduction Mysticism is a term so irresponsibly applied in English that it has become the first duty of those who use it to explain what they mean by it. The Concise Oxford Dictionary (1911), after defining a mystic as "one who believes in spiritual apprehension of truths beyond the understanding," adds, "whence mysticism (n.) (often contempt)." Whatever may be the precise... more...

CHAPTER I On a certain island in the Paumotu Group, known on the charts as Chain Island, but called Anaa by the people themselves, lived a white man named Martin Flemming, one of those restless wanderers who range the Pacific in search of the fortune they always mean to gain, but which never comes to them, except in some few instances—so few that they might be counted on one's fingers. Two years... more...

I AT BREAK OF DAY "Stay here beside her, major. I shall not he needed for an hour yet.Meanwhile I'll go downstairs and snatch a bit of sleep, or talk to oldJane." The night was hot and sultry. Though the windows of the chamber were wide open, and the muslin curtains looped back, not a breath of air was stirring. Only the shrill chirp of the cicada and the muffled croaking of the frogs in... more...

FIRST JOURNEY ——nec herba, nec latens in asperis Radix fefellit me locis. In the month of April 1812 I left the town of Stabroek to travel through the wilds of Demerara and Essequibo, a part of ci-devant Dutch Guiana, in South America. The chief objects in view were to collect a quantity of the strongest wourali poison and to reach the inland frontier-fort of Portuguese Guiana. It would be a... more...

THEREFORE AND BECAUSE.   A distinguished general-officer being appointed to a command in which he would be called on to discharge judicial as well as military duties, expressed to Lord Mansfield his apprehensions, that he would execute his office but ill in the former respect, and that his inexperience and ignorance of technical jurisprudence would prove a serious impediment to his efficient... more...

In vain, after that, did Anty try to sleep; turn which way she would, she saw the bloodshot eyes and horrid drunken face of her cruel brother. For a long time she lay, trembling and anxious; fearing she knew not what, and trying to compose herself—trying to make herself think that she had no present cause for fear; but in vain. If she heard a noise, she thought it was her brother's footstep, and... more...

Chapter One. Probabilities Considered. The United States—what are they? Two hundred years ago, this question could not have been answered; it could not even have been asked. Now it can be answered by the dwellers in every quarter of the globe. Then a few small settlements of earnest men, flying from the religious intolerance of the Old World, dotted a narrow strip of coast line on our New England... more...

THROUGH THE GATES OF THE EAST S.S. Scotia, Oct. 19, 19—. … This is a line to send off with the pilot. There is nothing to say except "Good-bye" again. We have had luncheon, and I have been poking things out of my cabin trunk, and furtively surveying one—there are two, but the other seems to be lost at present—of my cabin companions. She has fair hair and a blue motor-veil, and looks... more...