Classics Books

MOZART The composer whom we call WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART was called Wolferl when he was a little boy. He had a sister, MARIA ANNA, who was called NANNERL. Nannerl was five years older than her brother. She had lessons from her father on a kind of piano called a harpsichord. Here is a picture of one. MOZART'S HARPSICHORD When Wolferl was three years old he used to listen to Nannerl's playing.... more...

BOOK-WORSHIP.   A book belongs in a peculiar manner to the age and nation that produce it. It is an emanation of the thought of the time; and if it survive to an after-time, it remains as a landmark of the progress of the imagination or the intellect. Some books do even more than this: they press forward to the future age, and make appeals to its maturer genius; but in so doing they still belong to... more...

JESUS WALKING ON THE WATER. And when he had sent them away, he departed into a mountain to pray. And when, even was come, the ship was in the midst of the sea, and he alone on the land. And he saw them toiling in rowing; for the wind was contrary unto them: and about the fourths watch of the night he cometh unto them, walking upon the sea, and would have passed: by them. But when they saw him walking... more...

CHAPTER I. THE OUTLAWS. It was a bright morning in the month of August, when a lad of some fifteen years of age, sitting on a low wall, watched party after party of armed men riding up to the castle of the Earl of Evesham. A casual observer glancing at his curling hair and bright open face, as also at the fashion of his dress, would at once have assigned to him a purely Saxon origin; but a keener eye... more...

CHAPTER I HOW IT CAME ABOUT Two men were sitting in the smoking-room of a London club. The room was almost empty, and as they occupied arm-chairs in one corner of it, they were able to talk freely without fear of being overheard. One of them was a man of sixty, the other some five or six and twenty. "I must do something," the younger man said, "for I have been kicking my heels about London... more...

The scenes of the Play-play change with each act. For Act I the set is a drawing-room in a wealthy old New York home, entrances Right-center and Left. Both front and rear scenes are lighted by many small lights, which can be turned off a few at a time, so that one scene or the other fades slowly. When the Real-play is in full light, the Play-play is dark and invisible. When the front scene is entirely... more...

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THE MUSE'S TRAGEDY Danyers afterwards liked to fancy that he had recognized Mrs. Anerton at once; but that, of course, was absurd, since he had seen no portrait of her—she affected a strict anonymity, refusing even her photograph to the most privileged—and from Mrs. Memorall, whom he revered and cultivated as her friend, he had extracted but the one impressionist phrase: "Oh, well,... more...

Ladies and Gentlemen: It is a remarkable and at the same time a terrible and most lamentable fact, that the practice of medicine—an art of daily necessity and application, most nearly affecting the dearest interests and well being of mankind, and to the improvement of which we are encouraged and impelled by the strongest motives of interest and humanity, of love for our neighbor and emulous zeal for... more...

CHAPTER I. Description of Plymouth, N. C. Plymouth, in 1863-4, was a small town, situate on the Roanoke river, about six miles from where the waters of that stream enters the Albermarle Sound. The river at Plymouth is nearly a quarter of a mile wide, and with a sufficient depth of water to float the largest draught gunboats. The shore next the town was supplied with a wharf for landing steamers that... more...