Historical Books

CHAPTER I IN ACTION OVER THE ARGONNE "Will that starting signal ever come, Tom?" "Just hold your horses, Jack. The other squadron has gone out, and is already hard at it over the Boche line. Our turn next. Keep cool. And here's hoping we both pull through with our usual good luck." "Wow! See that big Hun plane, a Fokker, too, take the nose dive, will you? But he's overshot... more...

Preface. In the world's history, there is no more striking example of heroic bravery and firmness than that afforded by the people of the province of Poitou, and more especially of that portion of it known as La Vendee, in the defence of their religion and their rights as free men. At the commencement of the struggle they were almost unarmed, and the subsequent battles were fought by the aid of... more...

CHAPTER I. IN FLIGHT Dick Mason, caught in the press of a beaten army, fell back slowly with his comrades toward a ford of Bull Run. The first great battle of the Civil War had been fought and lost. Lost, after it had been won! Young as he was Dick knew that fortune had been with the North until the very closing hour. He did not yet know how it had been done. He did not know how the Northern charges... more...

Chapter 1: A Brush With The Robbers. "Help--help--help!" This cry, growing feebler at each repetition, was borne by the evening breeze to the ears of a traveller who was picking his way along the dark mazes of Epping Forest one cool, fresh October day. Instinctively he drew rein and listened, laying his band unconsciously upon the hilt of his poniard. "A woman's voice," he said... more...

IDA.... "Thou shall not lackThe flower that's like thy face, pale Primrose." Cymbeline.   The little old lady lived over the way, through a green gate that shut with a click, and up three white steps. Every morning at eight o'clock the church bell chimed for Morning Prayer—chim! chime! chim! chime!—and every morning at eight o'clock the little old lady came down the white... more...

A Tale of the Red River Plains. Help! A blizzard was blowing wildly over the American prairies one winter day in the earlier part of the present century. Fresh, free and straight, it came from the realms of Jack Frost, and cold—bitterly cold—like the bergs on the Arctic seas, to which it had but recently said farewell. Snow, fine as dust and sharp as needles, was caught up bodily by the wind in... more...

CHAPTER I RÉNÉ DE VEAUX On a dreary winter's day, early in the year 1564, young Réné de Veaux, who had just passed his sixteenth birthday, left the dear old chateau where he had spent his happy and careless boyhood, and started for Paris. Less than a month before both his noble father and his gentle mother had been taken from him by a terrible fever that had swept over the country, and Réné... more...

DANGER AHEAD. There was snow in the air. Warren Starr had felt it ever since meridian, though not a flake had fallen, and the storm might be delayed for hours yet to come. There was no mistaking the dull leaden sky, the chill in the atmosphere, and that dark, increasing gloom which overspreads the heavens at such times. Young Warren was a fine specimen of the young hunter, though he had not yet passed... more...

My first Appearance in Uniform. “Um!” ejaculated my father as he thoughtfully removed his double eye-glass from his nose with one hand, and with the other passed a letter to me across the breakfast-table—“Um! this letter will interest you, Dick. It is from Captain Vernon.” My heart leapt with sudden excitement, and my hand trembled as I stretched it out for the proffered epistle. The mention... more...

THE RAFT. Although the Venture was by no means so large a raft as many that Winn Caspar had watched glide down the Mississippi, he considered it about the finest craft of that description ever put together. He was also a little more proud of it than of anything else in the whole world. Of course he excepted his brave soldier father, who had gone to the war as a private, to come home when it was all... more...