Classics Books

CHAPTER I For forty-eight hours the snow-storm had been raging unabated over New York. After a wild and windy Thursday night the world had awakened to a mysterious whirl of white on Friday morning, and to a dark, strange day of steady snowing. Now, on Saturday, dirty snow was banked and heaped in great blocks everywhere, and still the clean, new flakes fluttered and twirled softly down, powdering and... more...

I. Real and Ideal—these are the handy terms, admiring or disapproving, which criticism claps with random facility on to every imaginable school. This artist or group of artists goes in for the real—the upright, noble, trumpery, filthy real; that other artist or group of artists seeks after the ideal—the ideal which may mean sublimity or platitude. We summon every living artist to state whether he... more...

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON AN ELEGY High on his Patmos of the Southern SeasOur northern dreamer sleeps,Strange stars above him, and above his graveStrange leaves and wings their tropic splendours wave,While, far beneath, mile after shimmering mile,The great Pacific, with its faery deeps,Smiles all day long its silken secret smile. Son of a race nomadic, finding stillIts home in regions furthest from its... more...

Lady Clare It was the time when lilies blow,And clouds are highest up in air.Lord Ronald brought a lily-white doeTo give his cousin, Lady Clare. I trow they did not part in scorn:Lovers long betrothed were they;They two will wed the morrow morn;God's blessing on the day! "He does not love me for my birthNor for my lands so broad and fair;He loves me for my own true worth,And that is well,"... more...

"What Think Ye, Masters, of These Things?" (A Poem read on Oklahoma Day, September 6, 1904, at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition.)O, ye who frame the sovereign law,And heal the hurts of ocean islesTill hid are savage tooth and clawAnd Peace above the battle smiles,—If Justice reigns and Mercy clings,What think ye, Masters, of these things?The Father of the Waters greetsImperial sisters proud... more...

CHAPTER I OF A CURIOUS MEETING OF EXTREMES On the dreary suburban edge of a very old, very ignorant, very sooty, hardhearted, stony-streeted, meanly grim, little provincial town there stands a gasometer. On one side of this gasometer begins a region of disappointed fields, which, however, has hardly begun before a railway embankment cuts across, at an angle convenient for its entirely obscuring the few... more...

PREFACE. The subject of this book died one hundred years ago. Within his forty years of life, he discovered a very large area of what is now an important region of the earth; he participated in stirring events which are memorable in modern history; he applied a vigorous and original mind to the advancement of knowledge, with useful results; and he was the victim of circumstances which, however stated,... more...

The Bad Boy Begins a Diary--Dad Has Become Manager for aCircus--The Bad Boy Expects to Curry the Hyena and Do Stuntson the Trapeze--Ma Says Pa Will Ogle the CircassianBeauty--Pa Buys Some Circus Clothes and Lets His WhiskersGrow. April 10, 19..--I never thought it would come to this, that I should keep a diary, because I am not a good little boy. Nobody ever keeps a diary except a boy that wants to be... more...

THE LIFE OF JOHN DRYDEN. John Dryden was born on the 9th of August 1631, at a place variously denominated Aldwincle, or Oldwincle, All Saints; or at Oldwincle, St Peter's, in Northamptonshire. The name Dryden or Driden, is from the North. There are Drydens still in the town of Scotland where we now write; and the poet's ancestors lived in the county of Cumberland. One of them, named John,... more...

THE COMING STORM “Say, boys, it looks like a storm and a heavy one, too.” The jest and laughter ceased at once, and three pairs of eyes looked in the direction pointed out by the speaker. “See that big bank of cloud climbing up the sky?” continued Fred Rushton. “There’s more than a capful of wind in that, if I know anything about weather.” “You’re right, Fred,” said Lester Lee, who... more...