Classics Books

'WHAT A LOT OF BOYS!' It was before the days of sailor suits and knickerbockers. Nowadays boys would make great fun of the quaint little men in tight-fitting jackets, and trousers buttoning on above them, that many people still living can remember well, for it is not so very long ago after all. And whatever the difference in their clothes, the boys of then were in themselves very like the... more...

CONCLUDING PAPER.FOREST OF COCKATOOS.People who go to Australia expecting every other man they meet to be a convict, and every convict a ruffian in felon's garb, will assuredly find themselves mistaken. And if contemplating a residence in Sydney or Melbourne they need not anticipate the necessity of living in a tent or a shanty, nor yet of accepting the society of convicts or negroes as the only... more...

A full and authentic edition of Mozart's Letters ought to require no special apology; for, though their essential substance has already been made known by quotations from biographies by Nissen, Jahn, and myself, taken from the originals, still in these three works the letters are necessarily not only very imperfectly given, but in some parts so fragmentary, that the peculiar charm of this... more...

A RUNAWAY. Once, after an arickara Indian mother had finished all her packing, as they were going to move camp, she fixed a travois on her big dog and placed her baby in the basket. Then all was ready and they were about to start, when a great, ugly black dog came along, and the two dogs began to fight. The squaw whipped them apart, and after she had quieted her poor little baby boy, who had been very... more...

THE SOURCES AND AIMS OF THE SCIENCE OF EUGENICS "Bravas to all impulses sending sane children to the next age!" Eugenics has been defined as "the science of being well born." In the words of Sir Francis Galton, who may fairly be claimed as the founder of this newest of sciences, "Eugenics is the study of the agencies under social control, that may improve or impair the racial... more...

Part One: Angels and Ministers The Queen: God Bless Her! Dramatis Personae QUEEN VICTORIA LORD BEACONSFIELD MR. JOHN BROWN A FOOTMAN The Queen: God Bless Her! A Scene from Home-Life in the Highlands The august Lady is sitting in a garden-tent on the lawn of Balmoral Castle. Her parasol leans beside her. Writing-materials are on the table before her, and a small fan, for it is hot weather; also a dish... more...

CHAPTER I. THE MAN WITH THE BANNER. The history of Edward Arundel, second son of Christopher Arundel Dangerfield Arundel, of Dangerfield Park, Devonshire, began on a certain dark winter's night upon which the lad, still a schoolboy, went with his cousin, Martin Mostyn, to witness a blank-verse tragedy at one of the London theatres. There are few men who, looking back at the long story of their... more...

WHY AND WHEREFORE An ancient writer—I forget his name—declared that in one of the city-states of Greece there was the rule that when any citizen proposed a new law or the repeal of an old one, he should come to the popular assembly with a rope around his neck, and if his proposition failed of adoption, he was to be immediately hanged. It is said that amendments to the constitution of that state... more...

LEAVE PORT ESSINGTON. Early on the morning of the 4th of September, 1839, the Beagle was once more slipping out of Port Essington before a light land wind. We had taken a hearty farewell of our friends at Victoria, in whose prosperity we felt all the interest that is due to those who pioneer the way for others in the formation of a new settlement. No doubt the hope that our discoveries might open a new... more...

Part I."España de la guerraTremola la pendon." Cancion Patriotica. It wanted about an hour of sunset on the last day of September 1833, when two young men, whose respective ages did not much exceed twenty years, emerged from a country lane upon the high-road from Tarazona to Tudela, in that small district of Navarre which lies south of the river Ebro. The equipments of the travellers—for... more...