Classics Books

When MANA-YOOD-SUSHAI had made the gods and Skarl, Skarl made a drum, and began to beat upon it that he might drum for ever. Then because he was weary after the making of the gods, and because of the drumming of Skarl, did MANA-YOOD-SUSHAI grow drowsy and fall asleep. And there fell a hush upon the gods when they saw that MANA rested, and there was silence on Pegana save for the drumming of Skarl.... more...

CHAPTER I. PLANT LIFE. The fact that plants, in common with man and the lower animals, possess the phenomena of life and death, naturally suggested in primitive times the notion of their having a similar kind of existence. In both cases there is a gradual development which is only reached by certain progressive stages of growth, a circumstance which was not without its practical lessons to the early... more...

Success has no secret. Her voice is forever ringing through the market-place and crying in the wilderness, and the burden of her cry is one word—WILL. Any normal young man who hears and heeds that cry is equipped fully to climb to the very heights of life. The message I would like to leave with the young men and women of America is a message I have been trying humbly to deliver from lecture platform... more...

CHAPTER I THE FUGITIVE The gaunt man led the way. At his heels, doggedly, came the two short ones, fagged, yet uncomplaining; all of them drenched to the skin by the chill rain that swirled through the Gap, down into the night- ridden valley below. Sky was never so black. Days of incessant storm had left it impenetrably overcast. These men trudged—or stumbled—along the slippery road which skirted... more...

CHAPTER I. Of how I, Nigel de Bessin, was brought up by the monks of the Vale in Guernsey Island, and how on a certain day the abbot gave me choice of two lives, and which I chose. This is the chronicle of me, Nigel de Bessin, of good Norman stock, being a cadet of the great house, whose elder branch is even to-day settled at St. Sauveur, in the Cotentin. And I write it for two reasons. First, for the... more...

CHAPTER I. PUNISHMENT. We will again conduct the reader into the study of Jacques Ferrand. Availing ourselves of the loquacity of the clerks, we shall endeavour, through their instrumentality, to narrate the events that had occurred since the disappearance of Cecily. "A hundred sous to ten, if his present state continues, that in less than a month our governor will go off with a pop." "The... more...

I "IN THE BEGINNING—GOD" Religion is the relation between man and his Maker—the most important relationship into which man enters. Most of the relationships of life are voluntary; we enter into them or not as we please. Such, for illustration, are those between business partners, between stockholders in a corporation, between friends and between husband and wife. Some relationships, on the... more...

KEEPING UP WITH LIZZIE IN WHICH THE LEADING TRADESMEN OF POINTVIEW BECOME A BOARD OF ASSESSORS The Honorable Socrates Potter was the only "scientific man" in the village of Pointview, Connecticut. In every point of manhood he was far ahead of his neighbors. In a way he had outstripped himself, for, while his ideas were highly modern, he clung to the dress and manners that prevailed in his... more...

CHAPTER I. THE CROWN PRINCE RUNS AWAY The Crown Prince sat in the royal box and swung his legs. This was hardly princely, but the royal legs did not quite reach the floor from the high crimson-velvet seat of his chair. Prince Ferdinand William Otto was bored. His royal robes, consisting of a pair of blue serge trousers, a short Eton jacket, and a stiff, rolling collar of white linen, irked him. He had... more...

CRITIAS. PERSONS OF THE DIALOGUE: Critias, Hermocrates, Timaeus, Socrates. TIMAEUS: How thankful I am, Socrates, that I have arrived at last, and, like a weary traveller after a long journey, may be at rest! And I pray the being who always was of old, and has now been by me revealed, to grant that my words may endure in so far as they have been spoken truly and acceptably to him; but if unintentionally... more...