War & Military Books

THE MILLER'S WIFE OF ERBISDORF. The ancient and free mountain city of Freiberg lies only about five-and-twenty miles south-west of Dresden, yet has a far more severe climate than the Saxon capital—a fact that may be understood if we remember that the road which leads from Dresden to Freiberg is up hill almost all the way. The Saxon Erzgebirge must not be pictured as a chain of separate... more...

STRUGGLING IN THE WORLD. Do you know where it is -- the Hollow Land? I have been looking for it now so long, trying to find it again the Hollow Land for there I saw my love first. I wish to tell you how I found it first of all; but I am old, my memory fails me: you must wait and let me think if I perchance can tell you how it happened. Yea, in my ears is a confused noise of trumpet-blasts singing over... more...

CHAPTER I THE TRENCH A young man was shaving. His feet rested upon a broad plank embedded in mud, and the tiny glass in which he saw himself hung upon a wall of raw, reeking earth. A sky, somber and leaden, arched above him, and now and then flakes of snow fell in the sodden trench, but John Scott went on placidly with his task. The face that looked back at him had been changed greatly in the last six... more...

CHAPTER I AN UNEXPECTED VISITOR "Cornelius!" exclaimed Captain Passford, as a young man of nineteen was shown into the library of the magnificent dwelling of the millionnaire at Bonnydale, on the Hudson. "Cornelius Passford, Uncle Horatio," replied the young man, as the captain rushed to him and extended his hand. "I think there can be no mistake about it; and I should have been no... more...

CHAPTER I. MR. FALKIRK. "We may shut our eyes, but we cannot help knowingThat skies are clear and grass is growing." When one has in charge a treasure which one values greatly, and which, if once made known one is pretty sure to lose, I suppose the impulse of most men would be towards a hiding- place. So, at any rate, felt one of the men in this history. Schools had done their secluding work... more...

Preface. As many boys into whose hands the present volume may fall will not have read my last year's book, With Moore in Corunna, of which this is a continuation, it is necessary that a few words should be said, to enable them to take up the thread of the story. It was impossible, in the limits of one book, to give even an outline of the story of the Peninsular War, without devoting the whole... more...

PRELUDE It was graduation day at West Point, and there had been a remarkable scene at the morning ceremonies. In the presence of the Board of Visitors, the full-uniformed officers of the academic and military staff, the august professors and their many assistants, scores of daintily dressed women and dozens of sober-garbed civilians, the assembled Corps of Cadets, in their gray and white, had risen as... more...

I Frances Harrison was sitting out in the garden under the tree that her husband called an ash-tree, and that the people down in her part of the country called a tree of Heaven. It was warm under the tree, and Frances might have gone to sleep there and wasted an hour out of the afternoon, if it hadn't been for the children. Dorothy, Michael and Nicholas were going to a party, and Nicky was... more...

CHAPTER I. THE TWIN EAGLETS. Autumn was upon the world -- the warm and gorgeous autumn of the south -- autumn that turned the leaves upon the trees to every hue of russet, scarlet, and gold, that transformed the dark solemn aisles of the trackless forests of Gascony into what might well have been palaces of fairy beauty, and covered the ground with a thick and soundless carpet of almost every hue of... more...

Chapter 1: Fresh from Ireland. A number of officers of O'Brien's regiment of foot, forming a part of the Irish Brigade in the service of France, were gathered in a handsome apartment in the Rue des Fosses, on the 20th of June, 1701, when the door opened, and their colonel entered with a young officer in the uniform of the regiment. "I have asked you here, gentlemen all," he said,... more...