Classics Books

I THE MENTAL EXPEDITION The doctor closed the door behind him, crossed to the table, silently offered the geologist a cigar, and waited until smoke was issuing from it. Then he said: "Well," bluntly, "what's come between you and your wife, Van?" The geologist showed no surprise. Instead, he frowned severely at the end of his cigar, and carefully seated himself on the corner of the... more...

NAZEBY HALL It was perhaps a fortunate thing for Elizabeth that her ancestors went back to the Conquest, and that she numbered at least two Countesses and a Duchess among her relatives. Her father had died some years ago, and, her mother being an invalid, she had lived a good deal abroad. But, at about seventeen, Elizabeth began to pay visits among her kinsfolk. It was after arriving at Nazeby Hall,... more...

CHAPTER I WESTVILLE PREPARES TO CELEBRATE The room was thick with dust and draped with ancient cobwebs. In one corner dismally reposed a literary junk heap—old magazines, broken-backed works of reference, novels once unanimously read but now unanimously forgotten. The desk was a helter-skelter of papers. One of the two chairs had its burst cane seat mended by an atlas of the world; and wherever any... more...

"Do you know what would happen to him?" NOW state your problem." The man who was thus addressed shifted uneasily on the long bench which he and his companion bestrode. He was facing the speaker, and though very little light sifted through the cobweb-covered window high over their heads, he realized that what there was fell on his features, and he was not sure of his features, or of what... more...

PREFACE As this Story is of a species which, though not new, is out of the common track, it has been thought necessary to point out some circumstances to the reader, which will elucidate the design, and, it is hoped, will induce him to form a favourable, as well as a right judgment of the work before him. This Story is the literary offspring of The Castle of Otranto, written upon the same plan, with a... more...

INTRODUCTION.    "From each carved nook, and fretted bend,   Cornice and gallery, seem to send   Tones that with Seraph hymns might blend.    "Three solemn parts together twine,   In Harmony's mysterious line,   Three solemn aisles approach the shrine.    "Yet all are one, together all,   With thoughts that awe but not appal,   Teach the adoring heart to... more...

CHAPTER I The public may possibly wonder why it is that they have never heard in the papers of the fate of the passengers of the __Korosko__. In these days of universal press agencies, responsive to the slightest stimulus, it may well seem incredible that an international incident of such importance should remain so long unchronicled. Suffice it that there were very valid reasons, both of a personal... more...

The Prince of Wales at Sandringham. [The Prince of Wales is, of course, precluded by his position from granting interviews like private persons, but His Royal Highness has been so good as to give us special permission to insert the following extremely interesting article, which we are happy to be able to present to our readers in place of the Illustrated Interview for the present month. The next of the... more...

WHISTLER. I have studied Mr. Whistler and thought about him this many a year. His character was for a long time incomprehensible to me; it contained elements apparently so antagonistic, so mutually destructive, that I had to confess my inability to bring him within any imaginable psychological laws, and classed him as one of the enigmas of life. But Nature is never illogical; she only seems so, because... more...

INTRODUCTION. Twenty years have passed away since a band of hastily-gathered minute-men left their homes to defend the soil of Pennsylvania from the first threatened invasion of the State by the rebel army under General R.E. Lee. Viewed through the lapse of this long period, crowded as it has been with so many momentous events in the life of the nation, the incidents of that brief and comparatively... more...