Historical Books

THE HOME ON THE FRONTIER. "Dan! Dan! Come quick and see what I brought down with the gun!" "Why, Ralph, was that you I heard shooting? I thought it was father." "No; I was out, down by the river bank, and I brought down the finest deer you ever set eyes on. He was under the bunch of pecan-trees, and I let him have it straight in the neck and brought him down the first crack. Now... more...

"Pardon! Madame does not know that this is a smoking-carriage?" "But yes. Monsieur is very good. It is that my husband would smoke. He is an old soldier. He smokes all the time. Ciel! They are like chimneys, these old soldiers. This man of mine regrets that he cannot smoke when he is asleep!" While Madame delivered this address she continued also to mount the steps, and as she finished... more...

PREFACE Since the action of this story falls during the periods, and the book deals with personages and incidents, which are usually treated of in the more serious pages of history, it is proper that some brief word of explanation should be written by which I might confirm some of the romantic happenings hereafter related, which to the casual reader may appear to draw too heavily upon his credulity for... more...

A Mysterious Relative. It is nice to go home, even from Harton, though we may be leaving all our sports behind us. It used to be specially nice in winter; but you young fellows are made so comfortable at school nowadays that you miss one great luxury of return to the domestic hearth. Why, they tell me that the school-rooms at Harton are warmed! And I know that the Senate House at Cambridge is when men... more...

It must be a spirit much unlike my own, which can keep itself in health and vigor without sometimes stealing from the sultry sunshine of the world, to plunge into the cool bath of solitude. At intervals, and not infrequent ones, the forest and the ocean summon me—one with the roar of its waves, the other with the murmur of its boughs—forth from the haunts of men. But I must wander many a... more...

CHAPTER I. "There is a courtesy of the heart. Is it akin to love?"—Goethe.. It is the perfection of summer, early June, before the roses have shaken off their sweetness, and Grandon Park is lovely enough to compare with places whose beauty is an accretion of centuries rather than the work of decades. Yet these grand old trees and this bluff, with a strata of rock manifest here and there, are... more...

CHAPTER I Room service at the Ajax is of a quality befitting the newest, the largest, and the most expensive hotel in Dallas. While the standard of excellence is uniformly high, nevertheless some extra care usually attaches to a breakfast ordered from the Governor's suite—most elegant and most expensive of all the suites—hence the waiter checked over his card and made a final, fluttering... more...

Captain Philo's sail-loft was a pleasant place to sit in, and it was much frequented. At one end was a wide, sliding door, that opened on the water, and through it you saw the little harbor and the low, glistening sand-bar at its entrance, and whitecaps in the sea beyond, and shining sails. At the other end another wide door led, by a gently descending cleated platform, to the ground. It was a... more...

Erlingsen’s “At Home.” Every one who has looked at the map of Norway must have been struck with the singular character of its coast. On the map it looks so jagged, such a strange mixture of land and sea, that it appears as if there must be a perpetual struggle between the two,—the sea striving to inundate the land, and the land pushing itself out into the sea, till it ends in their dividing the... more...

Faustus, having long struggled with the shadows of Theology, the bubbles of Metaphysics, and the ignes-fatui of Morality, without being able to bring his mind to a firm conviction, at length cast himself into the dark fields of Magic, in the hope of forcing from Nature what she had so obstinately withheld from him.  His first attainment was the remarkable invention of Printing; but his second was... more...