Classics Books

CHAPTER I THE EARLY LITERATURE One Sunday morning, about the year 1661, a group of Indians was gathered around a noble-looking man, listening to a story he was reading. It was summer and the day was beautiful, and the little Indian children who sat listening were so interested that not even the thought of their favorite haunts by brookside or meadow could tempt them from the spot. The story was about... more...

A FEW WORDS ABOUT AMERICAN SLAVE CHILDREN. Children, you are free and happy. Kind parents watch over you with loving eyes; patient teachers instruct you from the beautiful pages of the printed book; benign laws, protect you from violence, and prevent the strong arms of wicked people from hurting you; the blessed Bible is in your hands; when you become men and women you will have full liberty to earn... more...

CHAPTER I."A SWEET GIRL GRADUATE.""Her eyesWould match the southern skiesWhen southern skies are bluest;Her heartWill always, take its partWhere southern hearts are truest."Such youth,With all its charms, forsooth.Alas! too well I know it!—Will claimA song of love and fameSung by some southern poet." "It's a perfect godsend, this invitation!" cried Olive Peyton, with... more...

PREFACE By Irvin S. CobbTherôle of discoverer is pleasing, nearly always, and more especially in its reactions is it pleasing. The actual performance of discovery may be fraught with hardships and with inconveniences and even with perils; as witness Christopher Columbus making his first voyage over this way in a walloping window-blind of a tub of a ship and his last one back with chains at his wrists... more...

CHILD'S FIRST PICTURE BOOK     THE FIRE HORSES stand ready in their stalls, and at the sound of the alarm gong the stall chains are let down and each horse goes quickly to his place at the engine, and the big iron collars are clamped around their necks and off they go to the fire, with the engine, at break-neck speed.     THE AUTOMOBILE FIRE ENGINE can go to the fires very swiftly. Many times... more...

MARY WILDER TILESTON. January 1 They go from strength to strength.—PS. lxxxiv. 7. First the blade, then the ear, after that the full corn in the ear.—MARK. iv. 28.   Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul,  As the swift seasons roll!  Leave thy low-vaulted past!  Let each new temple, nobler than the last,  Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast,  Till thou at length art... more...

CHAPTER I. BADEN OUT OF SEASON. A THEATRE by daylight, a great historical picture in the process of cleaning, a ballet-dancer of a wet day hastening to rehearsal, the favorite for the Oaks dead-lame in a straw-yard, are scarcely more stripped of their legitimate illusions than is a fashionable watering-place on the approach of winter. The gay shops and stalls of flaunting wares are closed; the... more...

CHAPTER I. Just when Meyerhofer's estate was to be sold by auction, his third son Paul was born. That was a hard time indeed. Frau Elsbeth, with her haggard face and melancholy smile, lay in her big four-post bed, with the cradle of the new-born child near her, and listened to every noise that reached her in her sad sickroom from the yard and the house. At each suspicious sound she started up, and... more...

THE DALBY BEAR There goes a bear on Dalby moors,Oxen and horses he devours. The peasants are in deep distressThe laidly bear should them oppress. Their heads together at length they lay,How they the bear might seize and slay. They drove their porkers through the wood,The bear turn’d round as he lay at food. Outspoke as best he could the bear:“What kind of guests approach my lair?” Uprose the bear... more...

Daisy Hanbury poked her parasol between the bars of the cage, with the amiable intention of scratching the tiger's back. The tiger could not be expected to know this all by himself, and so he savagely bit the end of it off, with diabolical snarlings. Daisy turned to her cousin with a glow of sympathetic pleasure. "What a darling!" she said. "He didn't understand, you see, and was... more...