Lifestyles Books

Chapter One. A beautiful island lying like a gem on the breast of the great Pacific—a coral reef surrounding, and a calm lagoon within, on the glass-like surface of which rests a most piratical-looking schooner. Such is the scene to which we invite our reader’s attention for a little while. At the time of which we write it was an eminently peaceful scene. So still was the atmosphere, so unruffled... more...

THE BROWNIES. A little girl sat sewing and crying on a garden seat. She had fair floating hair, which the breeze blew into her eyes, and between the cloud of hair, and the mist of tears, she could not see her work very clearly. She neither tied up her locks, nor dried her eyes, however; for when one is miserable, one may as well be completely so. "What is the matter?" said the Doctor, who was a... more...

THE LITTLE LANDING. A short distance from where Rollo lives, there is a small, but very pleasant house, just under the hill, where you go down to the stone bridge leading over the brook. There is a noble large apple tree on one side of the house, which bears a beautiful, sweet, and mellow kind of apple, called golden pippins. A great many other trees and flowers are around the house, and in the little... more...

The capture of the Weymouth—and what it led to. The French probably never did a more audacious thing than when, on the night of October 26th, 1804, a party of forty odd of them left the lugger Belle Marie hove-to in Weymouth Roads and pulled, with muffled oars, in three boats, into the harbour; from whence they succeeded in carrying out to sea the newly-arrived West Indian trader Weymouth, loaded... more...

CHAPTER I. "He that has light within his own clear breast,May sit i' th' centre and enjoy bright day."MILTON. The farming plan succeeded beyond Fleda's hopes thanks not more to her wisdom than to the nice tact with which the wisdom was brought into play. The one was eked out with Seth Plumfield's; the other was all her own. Seth was indefatigably kind and faithful. After his... more...

ON THE "EOLUS." T was on one of the cool, brilliant days which early June brings to the Narragansett country, that the steamer "Eolus" pushed out from Wickford Pier on her afternoon trip to Newport. The sky was of a beautiful translucent blue; the sunshine had a silvery rather than a golden radiance. A sea-wind blew up the Western Passage, so cool as to make the passengers on the upper... more...

MARY'S MEADOW. CHAPTER I. Mother is always trying to make us love our neighbors as ourselves. She does so despise us for greediness, or grudging, or snatching, or not sharing what we have got, or taking the best and leaving the rest, or helping ourselves first, or pushing forward, or praising Number One, or being Dogs in the Manger, or anything selfish. And we cannot bear her to despise us! We... more...

THE SETTING OUT. One pleasant morning in the autumn, when Rollo was about five years old, he was sitting on the platform, behind his father's house, playing. He had a hammer and nails, and some small pieces of board. He was trying to make a box. He hammered and hammered, and presently he dropped his work down and said, fretfully, "O dear me!" "What is the matter, Rollo?" said... more...

CHAPTER I. RUPERT'S LECTURES—THE OLD YELLOW LEATHER BOOK. We were very happy—I, Rupert, Henrietta, and Baby Cecil. The only thing we found fault with in our lives was that there were so few events in them. It was particularly provoking, because we were so well prepared for events—any events. Rupert prepared us. He had found a fat old book in the garret, bound in yellow leather, at the end of... more...

CHAPTER I. Low stirrings in the leaves, before the windWakes all the green strings of the forest lyre.LOWELL. The light of an early Spring morning, shining fair on upland and lowland, promised a good day for the farmer's work. And where a film of thin smoke stole up over the tree-tops, into the sunshine which had not yet got so low, there stood the farmer's house. It was a little brown house,... more...