Classics Books

The Casual Club On last Thursday evening the Casual Club was gathered about a corner table in Sherry's. The great room was beautiful, the music brilliant, the setting and table appointments magnificent, and the dinner all that might be asked. There came but one thing to grieve the tempers of our members—the service was slip-shod, inattentive, vile. One wonders that so splendid an arrangement... more...

CHAPTER I THE DAY BEFORE It was the last day of February, the extra day, dead still, and biting cold, with thick, lead-colored skies shading down to inky blue at the western horizon. In the ravine below John Watson's house trees cracked ominously in the frost, and not even a rabbit was stirring. The hens had not come out, though an open door had extended an invitation, and the tamworths had... more...

My dear Maurice, It was in Normandy, you will remember, and in the heat of the year, when the birds were silent in the trees and the apples nearly ripe, with the sun above us already of a stronger kind, and a somnolence within and without, that it was determined among us (the jolly company!) that I should write upon Nothing, and upon all that is cognate to Nothing, a task not yet attempted since the... more...

CHAPTER I THE RED ADMIRAL The tiny brown house cuddling like a wren's nest on the edge of the longest and deepest of the tide-water coves that cut through Riverton had but four rooms in all,—the kitchen tacked to the back porch, after the fashion of South Carolina kitchens, the shed room in which Peter slept, the dining-room which was the general living-room as well, and his mother's room,... more...

CHAPTER I Three chapters in the story of my life—three periods, distinct and well defined, yet consecutive—beginning when I had not completed twenty-five years and finishing before thirty, will probably prove the most eventful of all. To the very end they will come back oftenest to memory and seem more vivid than all the other years of existence—the four-and-twenty I had already lived, and the,... more...

CHAPTER I ANDY BURKE "John, saddle my horse, and bring him around to the door." The speaker was a boy of fifteen, handsomely dressed, and, to judge from his air and tone, a person of considerable consequence, in his own opinion, at least. The person addressed was employed in the stable of his father, Colonel Anthony Preston, and so inferior in social condition that Master Godfrey always... more...

THE PURPLE CLOUD Well, the memory seems to be getting rather impaired now, rather weak. What, for instance, was the name of that parson who preached, just before the Boreal set out, about the wickedness of any further attempt to reach the North Pole? I have forgotten! Yet four years ago it was familiar to me as my own name. Things which took place before the voyage seem to be getting a little cloudy in... more...

CHAPTER I. "And was it only a dream, Aileen?" "Only a dream, miss, but it consarned me greatly. Shure an' I never had the taste of a sweet sound sleep since I dramed it!" Honor Blake laughs, and passes her slim hand over the old woman's ruddy tanned cheek. "You dear silly old thing to bother your head about a dream! It will be time enough to fret when we've something... more...

JACK SPRATONE day as little Puss, Junior, was traveling through New Mother Goose country, he came to a funny little house all covered with rose vines, even up to the top of the small red chimney they grew in crimson splendor. And as Puss stopped to look at the pretty sight, a tiny blue bird in a cage on the front porch began to sing:"Jack Sprat had a pig,Who was not very big;He was not very leanHe... more...

THE MAGIC WINGSONE morning as little Puss, Junior, on his Good Gray Horse rode through Mother Goose country he saw a spider sitting in her tiny lace house. She kept very still, for the early dewdrops still clung to the delicate web. And as the sun shone down they looked for all the world like diamonds on a piece of lace. So little Puss, Junior, stretched out his paw and, would you believe it, instead... more...