Classics Books

CHAPTER I. OUR GOVERNESS.HERE was nothing romantic in Miss Grantley's appearance, and yet she was the sort of person that you could not help looking at again and again if you once saw her. She was not very young, nor was she middle-aged—about thirty, perhaps. She was certainly not what is called a beauty, but she was not in the least plain. She was what some people would call "superior... more...

CHAPTER I Little Miss Severance sat with her hands as cold as ice. The stage of her coming adventure was beautifully set—the conventional stage for the adventure of a young girl, her mother's drawing-room. Her mother had the art of setting stages. The room was not large,—a New York brownstone front in the upper Sixties even though altered as to entrance, and allowed to sprawl backward over... more...

CHAPTER I A DUEL OF HEARTS Broad daylight streamed down into the vast studio through a skylight in the ceiling, which showed a large square of dazzling blue, a bright vista of limitless heights of azure, across which passed flocks of birds in rapid flight. But the glad light of heaven hardly entered this severe room, with high ceilings and draped walls, before it began to grow soft and dim, to slumber... more...

TO THE AMERICAN EDITION. Although the high literary art which Franzos possesses (the finer quality of which has been preserved in this translation) is fully admitted by intelligent Jews, the subject-matter of his book itself, its raison d'etre, they have by no means relished. In a review of "The Jews of Barnow," published some months ago in a leading New York journal, it was asserted by... more...

Chapter I Amanda Pratt's cottage-house was raised upon two banks above the road-level. Here and there the banks showed irregular patches of yellow-green, where a little milky-stemmed plant grew. It had come up every spring since Amanda could remember. There was a great pink-lined shell on each side of the front door-step, and the path down over the banks to the road was bordered with smaller... more...

A Little Essay on Books "Hogan tells me that wan iv th' first things man done afther he'd larned to kill his neighborin' animals, an' make a meal iv wan part iv thim an' a vest iv another, was to begin to mannyfacther lithrachoor, an' it's been goin' on up to th' prisint day. Thim was times that th' Lord niver heerd about, but is as well known to... more...

PREFACE. Natural History has of late become a favourite pursuit in this country; and although its progress as a study may not have been equal to the enthusiasm which it has excited, its general effect is unquestionably beneficial. In consequence of the interest which it has created, a great variety of works, from the simple catechism to the elaborate treatise, have appeared in rapid succession. But... more...

CHAPTER I. A DISCOVERY. It is late evening in the forest-park of our town. Softly the foliage murmurs in the warm summer air and the chirping of the crickets in the distant meadows is heard far in among the trees. Through the tree-tops a pale light falls down upon the forest-path and upon the dark undergrowth of bush and shrubbery. The moon sprinkles the pathway with shimmering spots, and kindles... more...

CHAPTER I. "Per ambages et ministeria deorum."—PETRONTUS. [Through the mysteries and ministerings of the gods.] Mr. Roger Morton was behind his counter one drizzling, melancholy day. Mr. Roger Morton, alderman, and twice mayor of his native town, was a thriving man. He had grown portly and corpulent. The nightly potations of brandy and water, continued year after year with mechanical... more...

THE PADKALPATARU, or 'wish-granting tree of song,' may be considered as the scriptures of the Vaish.nava sect in Bengal. In form it is a collection of songs written by various poets in various ages, so arranged as to exhibit a complete series of poems on the topics and tenets which constitute the religious views of the sect. The book has been put together in recent times, and takes the reader... more...