Historical Books

CHAPTER I. "You are obstinate and ungrateful. You would rather see me suffer and die, than bend your stubborn pride in the effort to obtain relief for me. You will not try to save me." The thin, hysterically unsteady voice ended in a sob, and the frail wasted form of the speaker leaned forward, as if the issue of life or death hung upon an answer. The tower clock of a neighboring church began... more...

WORRIES OF A WINTER WALK The other winter, as I was taking a morning walk down to the East River, I came upon a bit of our motley life, a fact of our piebald civilization, which has perplexed me from time to time, ever since, and which I wish now to leave with the reader, for his or her more thoughtful consideration. The morning was extremely cold. It professed to be sunny, and there was really some... more...

THE DUEL I It was eight o'clock in the morning—the time when the officers, the local officials, and the visitors usually took their morning dip in the sea after the hot, stifling night, and then went into the pavilion to drink tea or coffee. Ivan Andreitch Laevsky, a thin, fair young man of twenty-eight, wearing the cap of a clerk in the Ministry of Finance and with slippers on his feet, coming... more...

O! I have climbed high, and my reward is small. Here I stand, with wearied knees, earth, indeed, at a dizzy depth below, but heaven far, far beyond me still. O that I could soar up into the very zenith, where man never breathed, nor eagle ever flew, and where the ethereal azure melts away from the eye, and appears only a deepened shade of nothingness! And yet I shiver at that cold and solitary thought.... more...

CHAPTER I. LIONEL CARVEL, OF CARVEL HALL Lionel Carvel, Esq., of Carvel Hall, in the county of Queen Anne, was no inconsiderable man in his Lordship's province of Maryland, and indeed he was not unknown in the colonial capitals from Williamsburg to Boston. When his ships arrived out, in May or June, they made a goodly showing at the wharves, and his captains were ever shrewd men of judgment who... more...

Part I. There are many times in this world when a healthy boy is happy. When he is put into knickerbockers, for instance, and 'comes a man to-day,' as my little Jim used to say. When they're cooking something at home that he likes. When the 'sandy-blight' or measles breaks out amongst the children, or the teacher or his wife falls dangerously ill—or dies, it... more...

LETTER I MISS BYRON, TO MISS SELBY Miss Byron, To Miss Selby. O my Lucy! What think you!—But it is easy to guess what you must think.I will, without saying one word more, enclose DR. BARTLETT'S TENTH LETTER The next day (proceeds my patron) I went to make my visit to the family. I had nothing to reproach myself with; and therefore had no other concern upon me but what arose from the unhappiness... more...

INTRODUCTION. [Illustration] Thackeray In His Study At Onslow Square. From a painting by E. M. Ward We know exceedingly little of the genesis and progress of Esmond. “It did not seem to be a part of our lives as Pendennis was,” says Lady Ritchie, though she wrote part of it to dictation. She “only heard Esmond spoken of very rarely”. Perhaps its state was not the less gracious. The Milton girls... more...

At five o'clock on the morning of the tenth of July, 1860, the front door of a certain house on Anchor Street, in the ancient seaport town of Rivermouth, might have been observed to open with great caution. This door, as the least imaginative reader may easily conjecture, did not open itself. It was opened by Miss Margaret Callaghan, who immediately closed it softly behind her, paused for a few... more...

CHAPTER I. THE WAGER "Speak of the Devil," whispered La Fosse in my ear, and, moved by the words and by the significance of his glance, I turned in my chair. 1The door had opened, and under the lintel stood the thick-set figure of the Comte de Chatellerault. Before him a lacquey in my escutcheoned livery of red-and-gold was receiving, with back obsequiously bent, his hat and cloak. A sudden... more...