General Books

Chapter One. “You, Tom Jones, let that pot-lid alone.” It was a big brown-faced woman who said that crossly, and a big rough-looking bugler, in the uniform of the 200th Fusiliers, with belts, buttons and facings looking very clean and bright, but the scarlet cloth ragged and stained from the rain and mud, and sleeping in it anywhere, often without shelter, who dropped the lid as if it were hot and... more...

ITHE BIG FAMILY When Mrs. Field Mouse moved from her home in Farmer Green's meadow to the more fashionable neighborhood near the gristmill, she had no idea that anyone would care to live in the little old house that she had left. So she was much surprised, the following summer, when she heard that a new family was occupying her former home. "If it's a small family they'll get along... more...

MY BOYS. Feeling that I have been unusually fortunate in my knowledge of a choice and pleasing variety of this least appreciated portion of the human race, I have a fancy to record some of my experiences, hoping that it may awaken an interest in other minds, and cause other people to cultivate the delightful, but too often neglected boys, who now run to waste, so to speak. I have often wondered what... more...

CHAPTER I. THE MAN IN THE MOON. Children, down on the planet which you call Earth, allow me to introduce myself to you! I am the Man in the Moon. I have no doubt that you know a good deal about me, in an indirect way, and that your nurses have told you all sorts of nonsense about my inquiring the way to Norwich—as if I didn't know the way to Norwich! and various things equally sensible. But now... more...

CHAPTER I THE CUB ENGINEERS REACH CAMP "Look, Tom! There is a real westerner!" Harry Hazelton's eyes sparkled, his whole manner was one of intense interest. "Eh?" queried Tom Reade, turning around from his distant view of a sharp, towering peak of the Rockies. "There's the real thing in the way of a westerner," Harry Hazelton insisted in a voice in which there was some... more...

CHAPTER I THE BROKEN BRIDGE "Aren't you glad, Nan? Aren't you terrible glad?" "Why, of course I am, Flossie!" "And aren't you glad, too, Bert?" Flossie Bobbsey, who had first asked this question of her sister, now paused in front of her older brother. She looked up at him smiling as he cut away with his knife at a soft piece of wood he was shaping into a boat for... more...

Adrift on the Ocean. On a certain morning, not very long ago, the sun, according to his ancient and admirable custom, rose at a very early hour, and casting his bright beams far and wide over the Pacific, lighted up the yellow sands and the verdant hills of one of the loveliest of the islands of that mighty sea. It was early morning, as we have said, and there was plenty of life—animal as well as... more...

CHAPTER I A CROCKERY CRASH "Well, here we are back home again!" exclaimed Nan Bobbsey, as she sat down in a chair on the porch. "Oh, but we have had such a good time!" "The best ever!" exclaimed her brother Bert, as he set down the valise he had been carrying, and walked back to the front gate to take a small satchel from his mother. "I'm going to carry mine! I want to... more...

JIMMY'S CRUISE IN THE PINAFORE. HOW HE SHIPPED. A boy sat on a door-step in a despondent attitude, with his eyes fixed on a pair of very shabby shoes, and his elbows resting on his knees, as if to hide the big patches there. But it was not the fact that his toes were nearly out and his clothes dilapidated which brought the wrinkles to his forehead and the tears to his eyes, for he was used to that... more...

The Family Party. “Harry, my boy; another slice of beef?” said Major Shafto, addressing his fine young sailor-son, a passed midshipman, lately come home from sea. “No, thank you, since I could not, if I took it, pay due respect to the mince-pies and plum-pudding; but Willy here can manage another slice, I daresay. He has a notion, that he will have to feed for the future on ‘salt junk’ and... more...