Classics Books

MADAM CROWL'S GHOST Twenty years have passed since you last saw Mrs. Jolliffe's tall slim figure. She is now past seventy, and can't have many mile-stones more to count on the journey that will bring her to her long home. The hair has grown white as snow, that is parted under her cap, over her shrewd, but kindly face. But her figure is still straight, and her step light and active. She... more...

They were rather an incongruous element amid the festivities, but they bore themselves very well, notwithstanding, and seemed to be sufficiently interested. The elder of the two—a tall, slender, middle-aged woman, with a somewhat severe, though delicate face—sat quietly apart, looking on at the rough dances and games with a keen relish of their primitive uncouthness; but the younger, a slight,... more...

McAllister's Christmas I McAllister was out of sorts. All the afternoon he had sat in the club window and watched the Christmas shoppers hurrying by with their bundles. He thanked God he had no brats to buy moo-cows and bow-wows for. The very nonchalance of these victims of a fate that had given them families irritated him. McAllister was a clubman, pure and simple; that is to say though neither... more...

CHAPTER I THE MATERIAL Judy, Tim, and Maria were just little children. It was impossible to say exactly what their ages were, except that they were just the usual age, that Judy was the eldest, Maria the youngest, and that Tim, accordingly, came in between the two. Their father did his best for them; so did their mother; so did Aunt Emily, the latter's sister. It is impossible to say very much... 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...

The Law, as quoted, lays down a fair conduct of life, and one not easy to follow. I have been fellow to a beggar again and again under circumstances which prevented either of us finding out whether the other was worthy. I have still to be brother to a Prince, though I once came near to kinship with what might have been a veritable King and was promised the reversion of a Kingdom — army, law-courts,... more...

CAIUS CAESAR CALIGULA. (251) I. Germanicus, the father of Caius Caesar, and son of Drusus and the younger Antonia, was, after his adoption by Tiberius, his uncle, preferred to the quaestorship [377] five years before he had attained the legal age, and immediately upon the expiration of that office, to the consulship [378]. Having been sent to the army in Germany, he restored order among the legions,... more...

CHAPTER I."Dream by dream shot through her eyes, and eachOutshone the last that lighted."SWINBURNE. Midnight,—without darkness, without stars! Midnight—and the unwearied sun stood, yet visible in the heavens, like a victorious king throned on a dais of royal purple bordered with gold. The sky above him,—his canopy,—gleamed with a cold yet lustrous blue, while across it slowly flitted a... more...

In the fereful tyme of the sweate (ryghte honourable) many resorted vnto me for counseil, among whõe some beinge my frendes & aquaintance, desired me to write vnto them some litle counseil howe to gouerne themselues therin: saiyng also that I should do a greate pleasure to all my frendes and contrimen, if I would deuise at my laisure some thÄ©g, whiche from tyme to tyme might remaine, wherto... more...

"RABBITS" Jimbo's governess ought to have known better—but she didn't. If she had, Jimbo would never have met with the adventures that subsequently came to him. Thus, in a roundabout sort of way, the child ought to have been thankful to the governess; and perhaps, in a roundabout sort of way, he was. But that comes at the far end of the story, and is doubtful at best; and in the... more...