Historical Books

THE IRON FURROW The Ventisquero Range stretches across the circumference of one's vision in a procession of mountains that come tall and blue out of the distant north and seemingly march past to vanish in the remote south like azure phantoms. The mountains wall the horizon and dominate the mesa, their black forest-clad flanks crumpled and broken and gashed by cañons, lifting above timber-line... more...

CHAPTER I TOMMY CONTRIVES TO KEEP ONE OUT The celebrated Tommy first comes into view on a dirty London stair, and he was in sexless garments, which were all he had, and he was five, and so though we are looking at him, we must do it sideways, lest he sit down hurriedly to hide them. That inscrutable face, which made the clubmen of his later days uneasy and even puzzled the ladies while he was making... more...

CHAPTER I THE HORSE VALLEY ADVENTURE "The first time I saw the boy, Jack Irons, he was about nine years old. I was in Sir William Johnson's camp of magnificent Mohawk warriors at Albany. Jack was so active and successful in the games, between the red boys and the white, that the Indians called him 'Boiling Water.' His laugh and tireless spirit reminded me of a mountain brook. There... more...

CHAPTER I. "Did you tell her that Dr. Hargrove is absent?" "I did, ma'am; but she says she will wait." "But, Hannah, it is very uncertain when he will return, and the night is so stormy he may remain in town until to-morrow. Advise her to call again in the morning." "I said as much at the door, but she gave me to understand she came a long way, and should not leave here... more...

Chapter 1: In which the Court Leet of Market Drayton entertains Colonel Robert Clive; and our hero makes an acquaintance. One fine autumn evening, in the year 1754, a country cart jogged eastwards into Market Drayton at the heels of a thick-set, shaggy-fetlocked and broken-winded cob. The low tilt, worn and ill fitting, swayed widely with the motion, scarcely avoiding the hats of the two men who sat... more...

CHAPTER I. hristopher Columbus has always been a object of extreme interest and admiration to me ever sence I first read about him in my old Olney's Gography, up to the time when I hearn he wuz a-goin' to be celebrated in Chicago. I always looked up to Christopher, I always admired him, and in a modest and meetin'-house sense, I will say boldly and with no fear of Josiah before my eyes... more...

CHAPTER I. I had noticed for some time that Josiah Allen had acted queer. He would seem lost in thought anon or oftener, and then seemin'ly roust himself up and try to act natural. And anon he would drag his old tin chest out from under the back stairway and pour over musty old deeds and papers, drawed up by his great-grandpa mebby. He did this last act so often that I said to him one day,... more...

Preface. It is difficult, in these days of religious toleration, to understand why men should, three centuries ago, have flown at each others' throats in the name of the Almighty; still less how, in cold blood, they could have perpetrated hideous massacres of men, women, and children. The Huguenot wars were, however, as much political as religious. Philip of Spain, at that time the most powerful... more...

CHAPTER I. DEATH AND BURIAL OF A SLAVE'S INFANT. "The small and great are there, and the servant is free from his master." A Southern gentleman, who was visiting in New York, sent me, with his reply to my inquiries for the welfare of his family at home, the following letter which he had just received from one of his married daughters in the South. The reader will be so kind as to take the... more...

CHAPTER I THE THREE FRIENDS A canoe containing two boys and a man was moving slowly on one of the little lakes in the great northern wilderness of what is now the State of New York. The water, a brilliant blue under skies of the same intense sapphire tint, rippled away gently on either side of the prow, or rose in heaps of glittering bubbles, as the paddles were lifted for a new stroke. Vast masses of... more...