Classics Books

Mark Renner looked anxiously backward as he ran up the street to the place where the faded gold lettering on one window said "Jewelry." That would be a good place to hide, he thought. Most of the plate-glass windows and doors along the street were broken out as in fact they were everywhere, and had been for twenty years—but one of the jewelry windows and the door, protected by iron grating,... more...

Chapter 1 Small feckless clouds were hurried across the vast untroubled sky—shepherdless, futile, imponderable—and were torn to fragments on the fangs of the mountains, so ending their ephemeral adventures with nothing of their fugitive existence left but a few tears. It was cold in the Callow—a spinney of silver birches and larches that topped a round hill. A purple mist hinted of buds in the... more...

CHAPTER INAT SAVES A BOAT "There's a rowboat adrift!" exclaimed one of a group of men who stood on the edge of a large pier at Chicago's water front. "Yes, and the steamer will sure smash it," added another. "She's headed right for it! It's a wonder folks wouldn't learn to tie their boats secure. Whose is it?" "I don't know. It's a good... more...

I.—THE LAW OF NATIONS. It seems certain that Mexico must ultimately submit to such terms of peace as the United States shall dictate. An heterogeneous population of seven millions, with very limited resources and no credit; distracted by internal dissensions, and by the ambition of its chiefs, a prey by turns to anarchy and to military usurpers; occupying among the nations of the civilized world,... more...

GOETHE. In an old, many-cornered, and gloomy house at Frankfort-on-the-Main, upon the 28th of August, 1749, was born the greatest German of his day, Wolfgang Goethe. The back of the house, from the second story, commanded a very pleasant prospect over an almost immeasurable extent of gardens stretching to the walls of the city, but the house itself was gloomy, being shut in by a high wall. Over these... more...

CHAPTER I. ENLISTING At 6.45 p.m. on Saturday, July 25, 1914, Alec and I determined to take part in the Austro-Servian War. I remember the exact minute, because we were standing on the "down" platform of Earl's Court Station, waiting for the 6.55 through train to South Harrow, and Alec had just remarked that we had ten minutes to wait. We had travelled up to London, intending to work in... more...

CHAPTER ONE THE COURAGE OF SELF-CONQUESTTHE highest courage is impossible without self-conquest. And self-conquest is never easy. A man may be a marvel of physical courage, and be a coward in matters of self-government. Failure here threatens dire disaster to his entire career.Alexander the Great conquered most of the world he knew, but he permitted his lower nature to conquer his better self, and he... more...

INTRODUCTION. Story-telling, like letter-writing, is going out of fashion. There are no modern Scheherezades, and the Sultans nowadays have to be amused in a different fashion. But, for that matter, a hundred poetic pastimes of leisure have fled before the relentless Hurry Demon who governs this prosaic nineteenth century. The Wandering Minstrel is gone, and the Troubadour, and the Court of Love, and... more...

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...

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...