Literary Collections Books

Part IIAt the door of St. George's registry office, Charles Clare Winton strolled forward in the wake of the taxi-cab that was bearing his daughter away with "the fiddler fellow" she had married. His sense of decorum forbade his walking with Nurse Betty—the only other witness of the wedding. A stout woman in a highly emotional condition would have been an incongruous companion to his... more...

LETTER I.   Vanguard, off Malta,  Oct. 24, 1798. MY DEAR MADAM, After a long passage, we are arrived; and it is as I suspected—the ministers at Naples know nothing of the situation of the island. Not a house or bastion of the town is in possession of the islanders; and the Marquis de Niza tells me, they want arms, victuals, and support. He does not know, that any Neapolitan officers are in the... more...

CHAPTER I "What! never been to a political meeting; an' you living in a city. Back to the hamlet for you, boy; you're lost. "You're not? You know where you live, and could find your way home in the dark? My, but you're cert'nly the quick actor when it comes to thinking. "Sure I've been to more'n a dozen political meetin's. Ain't my Pa a member er... more...

PROLOGUE It was very quiet within the little room perched high up under the roof of Wallater's Buildings. Even the glowing logs in the grate burned tranquilly, without any of those brisk cracklings and sputterings which make such cheerful company of a fire, while the distant roar of London's traffic came murmuringly, dulled to a gentle monotone by the honeycomb of narrow side streets that... more...

There is a fine and beautiful alliance between all pastimes pursued on flood, field, and fell. The principles in human nature on which they depend, are in all the same; but those principles are subject to infinite modifications and varieties, according to the difference of individual and national character. All such pastimes, whether followed merely as pastimes, or as professions, or as the immediate... more...

THE RHYTHM OF LIFE If life is not always poetical, it is at least metrical.  Periodicity rules over the mental experience of man, according to the path of the orbit of his thoughts.  Distances are not gauged, ellipses not measured, velocities not ascertained, times not known.  Nevertheless, the recurrence is sure.  What the mind suffered last week, or last year, it does not suffer now; but it will... more...

LECTURE I INTRODUCTORY WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 25, 1916 I In the third book of the "Ethics", and in the second chapter, Aristotle, dealing with certain actions which, though bad in themselves, admit of pity and forgiveness because they were committed involuntarily, through ignorance, instances 'the man who did not know a subject was forbidden, like Aeschylus with the Mysteries,' and... more...

CHAPTER I. THE rain had poured in torrents all day, and now, for the third time since morning, I came home, wet, uncomfortable and weary. I half dreaded to look at the slate, lest some urgent call should stare me in the face. "It must indeed be a case of life and death, that takes me out again to-night," said I, as my good wife met me in the entry, and with light hands, made active by love,... more...

INTRODUCTION Swift has been styled the Prince of Journalists. Like most titles whose aim is to express in modern words the character and achievements of a man of a past age, this phrase is not of the happiest. Applied to so extraordinary a man as Jonathan Swift, it is both misleading and inadequate. At best it embodies but a half-truth. It belongs to that class of phrases which, in emphasizing a... more...

THE SURNAME OF STEVENSON From the thirteenth century onwards, the name, under the various disguises of Stevinstoun, Stevensoun, Stevensonne, Stenesone, and Stewinsoune, spread across Scotland from the mouth of the Firth of Forth to the mouth of the Firth of Clyde. Four times at least it occurs as a place-name. There is a parish of Stevenston in Cunningham; a second place of the name in the Barony of... more...