Classics Books

AT SUNDOWN TO E. C. S. Poet and friend of poets, if thy glassDetects no flower in winter's tuft of grass,Let this slight token of the debt I oweOutlive for thee December's frozen day,And, like the arbutus budding under snow,Take bloom and fragrance from some morn of MayWhen he who gives it shall have gone the wayWhere faith shall see and reverent trust shall know. THE CHRISTMAS OF 1888. Low... more...

CHAPTER I The ancient port of Sunwich was basking in the sunshine of a July afternoon. A rattle of cranes and winches sounded from the shipping in the harbour, but the town itself was half asleep. Somnolent shopkeepers in dim back parlours coyly veiled their faces in red handkerchiefs from the too ardent flies, while small boys left in charge noticed listlessly the slow passing of time as recorded by... more...

CHAPTER 1 "Until this moment I have never fully realised how great an ass a man can be. When I think that this morning I scurried through what might have been a decent breakfast, left my comfortable diggings, and was cooped up in a train for seven hours, that I am now driving in a pelting rain through, so far as I can see for the mist, what appears to be a howling wilderness, I ask myself if I am... more...

THE AMATEUR. "I ain't sayin' as how I could run a whole fire, same as some of the chiefs do; but when it comes to drivin' an engine, Dan Roberts, an' doin' it in time to get the first water, or layin' hose, I wouldn't knuckle down to the biggest man in the Department." "Now see here, Seth Bartlett, what's the sense of talkin' that way? It would... more...

CHAPTER I SOME CONTRASTS—HENLEY, THOMPSON, HARDY, KIPLING Meaning of the word "advance"—the present widespread interest in poetry—the spiritual warfare—Henley and Thompson—Thomas Hardy a prophet in literature—The Dynasts—his atheism—his lyrical power—Kipling the Victorian—his future possibilities—Robert Bridges—Robert W. Service. Although English poetry of the twentieth... more...

CHAPTER I. DEWLESS ROSES. Mrs. Rachel Sutton was a born match maker, and she had cultivated the gift by diligent practice. As the sight of a tendrilled vine suggests the need and fitness of a trellis, and a stray glove invariably brings to mind the thought of its absent fellow, so every disengaged spinster of marriageable age was an appeal—pathetic and sure—to the dear woman's helpful... more...

Lady Channice was waiting for her son to come in from the garden. The afternoon was growing late, but she had not sat down to the table, though tea was ready and the kettle sent out a narrow banner of steam. Walking up and down the long room she paused now and then to look at the bowls and vases of roses placed about it, now and then to look out of the windows, and finally at the last window she... more...

CHAPTER FIRST. Wiser Raymondus, in his closet pent,Laughs at such danger and adventurementWhen half his lands are spent in golden smoke,And now his second hopeful glasse is broke,But yet, if haply his third furnace hold,Devoteth all his pots and pans to gold.* * The author cannot remember where these lines are to be found: perhaps in Bishop Hall's Satires. [They occur in Book iv. Satire iii.]... more...

CHAPTER I The tiny, trivial touch of Destiny that caused the turn in Amarilly's fate-tide came one morning when, in her capacity as assistant to the scrub ladies at the Barlow Stock Theatre, she viewed for the first time the dress rehearsal of A Terrible Trial. Heretofore the patient little plodder had found in her occupation only the sordid satisfaction of drawing her wages, but now the... more...

INTRODUCTION The present work completes a series of fictitious narratives, intended to illustrate the manners of Scotland at three different periods. Waverley embraced the age of our fathers, Guy Mannering that of our own youth, and the Antiquary refers to the last ten years of the eighteenth century. I have, in the two last narratives especially, sought my principal personages in the class of society... more...