Historical Books

CHAPTER I.O that Decay were always beautiful!How soft the exit of the dying day,The dying season too, its disarrayIs gold and scarlet, hues of gay misrule,So it in festive cheer may pass away;Fading is excellent in earth or air,With it no budding April may compare,Nor fragrant June with long love-laden hours;Sweet is decadence in the quiet bowersWhere summer songs and mirth are fallen asleep,And sweet... more...

Throughout the whole of the habitable globe there nowhere is to be found more delightful or more invigorating air than that which every traveller through New Mexico, from Albuquerque, past Las Vegas, to the Raton Mountains, is free to breathe. Miss Grace Winthrop, of Boston, and also Miss Winthrop, her paternal aunt, and also Mr. Hutchinson Port, of Philadelphia, her maternal uncle—all of whom were... more...

HOW THREE PERSONS IN THIS HISTORY CAME BY THEIR NAMES. On a fine May morning in the year 1764,—that is to say, between the peace at Fontainebleau and the stamp act agitation, which great events have fortunately no connection with the present narrative,—a young man mounted on an elegant horse, and covered from head to foot with lace, velvet, and embroidery, stopped before a small house in the town... more...

CHAPTER I. On a spring day, in the year 1568, Mistress Talbot sat in her lodging at Hull, an upper chamber, with a large latticed window, glazed with the circle and diamond leading perpetuated in Dutch pictures, and opening on a carved balcony, whence, had she been so minded, she could have shaken hands with her opposite neighbour. There was a richly carved mantel-piece, with a sea-coal fire burning in... more...

THE BOBSLED RACE "All ready, boys?" "Wait a minute, Jack." "Can't wait; life is too short!" cried Jack Rover gayly. He was seated at the front of a long bobsled holding six boys. "Remember, we've got to be back at the Hall in half an hour." "Please don't mention it!" pleaded Randy Rover, his cousin. "Hi, you fellows! are you going to race or... more...

CHAPTER I THE KEY The May sun was shining on Michillimackinac, and I, Armand de Montlivet, was walking the strip of beach in front of the French garrison. I did not belong to Michillimackinac. I had come in only the day before with two canoes and four men, and I was bound for the beaver lands further west. A halt was necessary, for the trip had been severe, and remembering that it was necessity, and... more...

CHAPTER I Hugh McVey was born in a little hole of a town stuck on a mud bank on the western shore of the Mississippi River in the State of Missouri. It was a miserable place in which to be born. With the exception of a narrow strip of black mud along the river, the land for ten miles back from the town—called in derision by river men "Mudcat Landing"—was almost entirely worthless and... more...

NONCOMBATANTS About five o’clock that evening a Rhode Island battery clanked through the village and parked six dusty guns in a pasture occupied by some astonished cows. A little later the cavalry arrived, riding slowly up the tree-shaded street, escorted by every darky and every dog in the country-side. The clothing of this regiment was a little out of the ordinary. Instead of the usual campaign... more...

VANNA IS BID FOR Not easily would you have found a girl more winning in a tender sort than Giovanna Scarpa of Verona at one and twenty, fair-haired and flushed, delicately shaped, tall and pliant, as she then was. She had to suffer her hours of ill report, but passes for near a saint now, in consequence of certain miracles and theophanies done on her account, which it is my business to declare; before... more...

THE LITTLE GIRL "How would you like to go to New York to live, little girl?" The little girl looked up into her father's face to see if he was "making fun." He did sometimes. He was beginning to go down the hill of middle life, a rather stout personage with a fair, florid complexion, brown hair, rough and curly, and a border of beard shaved well away from his mouth. Both beard and... more...