Classics Books

I All this New-year's Day of 1850 the sun shone cloudless but wrought no thaw. Even the landscapes of frost on the window-panes did not melt a flower, and the little trees still keep their silvery boughs arched high above the jeweled avenues. During the afternoon a lean hare limped twice across the lawn, and there was not a creature stirring to chase it. Now the night is bitter cold, with no... more...

CHAPTER I The author dies, meets with Mercury, and is by him conductedto the stage which sets out for the other world. On the first day of December 1741 I departed this life at my lodgings in Cheapside. My body had been some time dead before I was at liberty to quit it, lest it should by any accident return to life: this is an injunction imposed on all souls by the eternal law of fate, to prevent the... more...

It was about the beginning of September, 1664, that I, among the rest of my neighbours, heard in ordinary discourse that the plague was returned again in Holland; for it had been very violent there, and particularly at Amsterdam and Rotterdam, in the year 1663, whither, they say, it was brought, some said from Italy, others from the Levant, among some goods which were brought home by their Turkey... more...

INTRODUCTION This is a "Journal of Impressions," and it is nothing more. It will not satisfy people who want accurate and substantial information about Belgium, or about the War, or about Field Ambulances and Hospital Work, and do not want to see any of these things "across a temperament." For the Solid Facts and the Great Events they must go to such books as Mr. E. A. Powell's... more...

FOREWORD The tendency to "forget the war" is not admirable. Such an attitude is in effect a negation of thought. The agony which shook mankind for more than four years and whose aftermath will be with us in years to come cannot be forgotten unless the conscience of mankind is dead. Rabbi Levinger's book is the narrative of a man who saw this great tragedy, took a part in it and has thought... more...

A is Ambition which leads you to buyA qualified hunter, the picture of pride,Of whom it is said, “He takes off in his stride.”This means he jumps you off with hounds in full cry. B is the Beauty who’s learning to “go,”Who comes to the Club on the morn of the Meet,And says to the Master, “Now if you’ll be sweetAnd let me ride near you, I’ll finish I know!”Benjamin Nicoll, Esq.—Essex... more...

It is an August morning. It is an old English manor-house. There is a breakfast-room hung with old gilded leather of the times of the Stuarts; it has oak furniture of the same period; it has leaded lattices with stained glass in some of their frames, and the motto of the house in old French, "J'ay bon vouloir," emblazoned there with the crest of a heron resting in a crown. Thence, windows... more...

CHAPTER I: CHARON MAKES A DISCOVERY Charon, the Ferryman of renown, was cruising slowly along the Styx one pleasant Friday morning not long ago, and as he paddled idly on he chuckled mildly to himself as he thought of the monopoly in ferriage which in the course of years he had managed to build up. “It’s a great thing,” he said, with a smirk of satisfaction—“it’s a great thing to be the... more...

Chapter I A bright spring day was fading into evening. High overhead in the clear heavens small rosy clouds seemed hardly to move across the sky but to be sinking into its depths of blue. In a handsome house in one of the outlying streets of the government town of O—— (it was in the year 1842) two women were sitting at an open window; one was about fifty, the other an old lady of seventy. The name... more...

MY LADY OF THE CONSTELLATIONS Sylvia was reading in her grandfather's library when the bell tinkled. Professor Kelton had few callers, and as there was never any certainty that the maid-of-all-work would trouble herself to answer, Sylvia put down her book and went to the door. Very likely it was a student or a member of the faculty, and as her grandfather was not at home Sylvia was quite sure that... more...