Historical Books

CHAPTER I It would soon be Christmas and Harry Kenton, at his desk in the Pendleton Academy, saw the snow falling heavily outside. The school stood on the skirt of the town, and the forest came down to the edge of the playing field. The great trees, oak and ash and elm, were clothed in white, and they stood out a vast and glittering tracery against the somber sky. The desk was of the old kind, intended... more...

CHAPTER I. THE PIONEER FAMILY.–A SPIRITED CHASE. “There, the last hill is dug, and I’m glad!” and Tom Jones leaned on his hoe, lost in thought. He was a stout lad of sixteen, with frowzy brown hair, crowned by a brimless straw hat, and his pants looked as if they had been turned inside out and outside in, upside down and downside up, and darned and patched and re-darned and patched again, until... more...

CHAPTER I A QUESTION OF SKILL It was June, and the peaceful stillness of a summer’s day hung over an ancient wood which lay in the heart of the New Forest near the village of Lyndhurst. The wood was a part of a large demesne which had at one time been bordered by hedges of yew and holly, but these, having been untrimmed for years, had grown into great bushes which in many places were choked up by... more...

CHAPTER I. THE LITTLE COLOUR GRINDER T was a bright morning of early April, many hundred years ago; and through all the fields and meadows of Normandy the violets and cuckoo-buds were just beginning to peep through the tender green of the young grass. The rows of tall poplar-trees that everywhere, instead of fences, served to mark off the farms of the country folk, waved in thespring wind like great,... more...

THE HOME IN ALSACE In the southwestern corner of the domains of Kaiser Bill, in a fair district to which he has no more right than a highwayman has to his victim's wallet, there is a quaint old house built of gray stone and covered with a clinging vine. In the good old days when Alsace was a part of France the old house stood there and was the scene of joy and plenty. In these evil days when... more...

CHAPTER I A PERILOUS PASSAGE "Well, good-bye, boys! You won't go far from camp before we return, will you?" The speaker was one of two men seated in an Indian canoe. He gripped the forward paddle, while his companion at the stern added cheerfully— "The backwoods is not the City of London. There are no policemen to appeal to if you lose your way. Besides, we hope to find dinner... more...

Little Will Shakespeare was going homeward through the dusk from Gammer Gurton's fireside. He had no timorous fears, not he. He would walk proudly and deliberately as becomes a man. Men are not afraid. Yet Gammer had told of strange happenings at her home. A magpie had flown screaming over the roof, the butter would not come in the churn, an' a strange cat had slipped out afore the maid at... more...

CHAPTER I "Well, Leon, it looks as if there was going to be a fight around here pretty soon." "Right you are, Earl. That suits me all right though and from the way the rest of the men are acting it seems to suit them too." Earl and Leon Platt, two American boys in the army of the French Republic, were seated outside their quarters behind the fighting line. The scene was in Champagne,... more...

WHO I AM Yes, my name is Richard Mutton. Sounds rather queer, doesn't it? The lads in London town used to vex me sorely by calling, "Baa, baa, black sheep," whenever I passed them, and yet he who will may find the name Richard Mutton written in the list of those who were sent to Virginia, in the new world, by the London Company, on the nineteenth day of December, in the year of Our Lord,... more...

CHAPTER I ANNE NELSON “I don’t know what I can do with you, I’m sure!” declared Mistress Stoddard, looking down at the small girl who stood on her door-step gazing wistfully up at her. “A man at the wharf said that you didn’t have any little girls,” responded the child, “and so I thought——” “’Twas Joe Starkweather told you, I’ll be bound,” said Mrs. Stoddard. “Well,... more...