Literary Collections Books

Introduction My aim in this little book has been to give short sketches and estimates of the greatest modern English writers from Macaulay to Stevenson and Kipling. Omissions there are, but my effort has been to give the most characteristic writers a place and to try to stimulate the reader's interest in the man behind the book as well as in the best works of each author. Too much space is devoted... more...

OVER THE WAY I had been living at Tunbridge Wells and nowhere else, going on for ten years, when my medical man—very clever in his profession, and the prettiest player I ever saw in my life of a hand at Long Whist, which was a noble and a princely game before Short was heard of—said to me, one day, as he sat feeling my pulse on the actual sofa which my poor dear sister Jane worked before her spine... more...

Letters of Ulysses S. Grant [In 1843, at the age of twenty-one, Ulysses S. Grant was graduated from West Point with the rank of brevet second lieutenant. He was appointed to the 4th Infantry, stationed at Jefferson Barracks near St. Louis. In May, 1844, he was ordered to the frontier of Louisiana with the army of observation, while the annexation of Texas was pending. The bill for the annexation of... more...

CHAPTER I In the troubled twilight of a March evening ten years ago, an old man, whose equipment and bearing suggested that he was fresh from travel, walked slowly across Clerkenwell Green, and by the graveyard of St. James's Church stood for a moment looking about him. His age could not be far from seventy, but, despite the stoop of his shoulders, he gave little sign of failing under the burden... more...

THE LIFE OF JEAN PAUL By BENJAMIN W. WELLS, Ph.D. Author of Modern German Literature. "The Spring and I came into the world together," Jean Paul liked to tell his friends when in later days of comfort and fame he looked back on his early years. He was, in fact, born on the first day (March 21) and at almost the first hour of the Spring of 1763 at Wunsiedel in the Fichtelgebirge, the very heart... more...

A SEVENTH-STORY HEAVEN At one end of the city that I love there is a tall, dingy pile of offices that has evidently seen more prosperous fortunes. It is not the aristocratic end. It is remote from the lordly street of the fine shops of the fair women, where in the summer afternoons the gay bank clerks parade arm-in-arm in the wake of the tempestuous petticoat. It lies aside from the great exchange... more...

An editorial in the Louisville Courier-Journal, early in 1901, said:"A remarkable transformation, or rather a development, has takenplace in Mark Twain. The genial humorist of the earlier day is nowa reformer of the vigorous kind, a sort of knight errant who doesnot hesitate to break a lance with either Church or State if hethinks them interposing on that broad highway over which he believesnot a... more...

Last spring I found a pumpkin seed,  And thought that I would goAnd plant it in a secret place,  That no one else would know,And watch all summer long to see  It grow, and grow, and grow,And maybe raise a pumpkin for  A Jack-a-lantern show. I stuck a stick beside the seed,  And thought that I should shoutOne morning when I stooped and saw  The greenest little sprout!I used to carry water... more...

No description available

TERRY DOLAN. ome years since circumstances caused me to spend the summer months in a farming district, a few miles from the village of E., and it was there I met with Terry Dolan. He had a short time previous come over from Ireland, and was engaged as a sort of chore boy by Mr. L., in whose family I resided during my stay in the neighborhood. This Terry was the oddest being with whom I ever chanced to... more...