Classics Books

I THE GEOGRAPHICAL AND POLITICAL POSITION OF RAVENNA Upon the loneliest and most desolate shore of Italy, where the vast monotony of the Emilian plain fades away at last, almost imperceptibly, into the Adrian Sea, there stands, half abandoned in that soundless place, and often wrapt in a white shroud of mist, a city like a marvellous reliquary, richly wrought, as is meet, beautiful with many fading... more...

I WOMAN IN MOROVENIA Morovenia is a state in which both the mosque and the motor-car now occur in the same landscape. It started out to be Turkish and later decided to be European. The Mohammedan sanctuaries with their hideous stencil decorations and bulbous domes are jostled by many new shops with blinking fronts and German merchandise. The orthodox turn their faces toward Mecca while the enlightened... more...

INTRODUCTION This book consists of three unpublished essays and of fifteen reprinted from Longman's Magazine, Fraser's Magazine, the New Quarterly, Knowledge, Chambers's Magazine, the Graphic, and the Standard, where they have probably been little noticed since the time of their appearance. Several more volumes of this size might have been made by collecting all the articles which were... more...

The story which is narrated in the following pages came to me from the lips of my old friend Allan Quatermain, or Hunter Quatermain, as we used to call him in South Africa. He told it to me one evening when I was stopping with him at the place he bought in Yorkshire. Shortly after that, the death of his only son so unsettled him that he immediately left England, accompanied by two companions, his old... more...

CHAPTER I. Wherein is shown how sagely the Rev. Master Fröhlich brought up his motherless daughter, pretty Michal. In the days when the Turkish Sultan ruled in Hungary as far as Ersekujvar and Eger, the German Kaiser from Eger to the Zips country, and George Rakoczy, Prince of Transylvania, from Zips to the Szeklerland—all three of whom were perpetually fighting among themselves, sometimes two... more...

The Educated Negro and His Mission. Human thought is like a pendulum. It sways from belief to belief, from theory to theory, from plan to plan, and the length of its vibrations is governed by a multitude of contending forces operating from both within and without. Two of these influences, in the present age, are all potential. One is the ardent desire to find the best ways and means by which the human... more...

A LAMENT "The parted spirit,Knoweth it not our sorrow? Answereth notIts blessing to our tears?" The circle is broken, one seat is forsaken,One bud from the tree of our friendship is shaken;One heart from among us no longer shall thrillWith joy in our gladness, or grief in our ill. Weep! lonely and lowly are slumbering nowThe light of her glances, the pride of her brow;Weep! sadly and long shall... more...

My Dear Brother: You did well to stay West. Would to God I had! Julia's big party came off last night. I told her weeks ago, when she began insinuating it, that if it must be it must be, of course, and that I would pay all the bills, but I wished it distinctly understood I wouldn't have anything else to do with it. She assured me that nothing whatever would be expected of me. Unfortunately,... more...

INTRODUCTORY A well known missionary of Peking, China, was invited one day by a Buddhist acquaintance to attend the ceremony of initiation for a class of one hundred and eighty priests and some twenty laity who had been undergoing preparatory instruction at the stately and important Buddhist monastery. The beautiful courts of the temple were filled by a throng of invited guests and spectators, waiting... more...

INTRODUCTION Between those last precise accounts of military engagements which antiquity has left us in small number, and what may be called the modern history of war, there lies a period of many centuries—quite 1400 years—during which the details of an action and even the main features of a campaign are never given us by contemporary recorders. Through all that vast stretch of time we are... more...