Literary Collections Books

Chapter One If Dad had been a coal baron, like Mr. Tudor Carstairs, or a stock-watering captain of industry, like Mrs. Sanderson-Spear's husband, or descended from a long line of whisky distillers, like Mrs. Carmichael Porter, why, then his little Elizabeth would have been allowed the to sit in seat of the scornful with the rest of the Four Hundred, and this story would never have been written.... more...

CHAPTER I. ACROSS LONDON BRIDGE A gentleman, noteworthy for a lively countenance and a waistcoat to match it, crossing London Bridge at noon on a gusty April day, was almost magically detached from his conflict with the gale by some sly strip of slipperiness, abounding in that conduit of the markets, which had more or less adroitly performed the trick upon preceding passengers, and now laid this one... more...

CHAPTER I In the first part of ROBINSON CRUSOE, at page one hundred and twenty-nine, you will find it thus written: "Now I saw, though too late, the Folly of beginning a Work before we count the Cost, and before we judge rightly of our own Strength to go through with it." Only yesterday, I opened my ROBINSON CRUSOE at that place. Only this morning (May twenty-first, Eighteen hundred and fifty),... more...

THE RECRUIT At times they saw him, by a phenomenon of vision or locomotion,abolish space in its two forms of Time and Distance; the formerbeing intellectual space, the other physical space. Intellectual History of Louis Lambert. On an evening in the month of November, 1793, the principal persons of Carentan were assembled in the salon of Madame de Dey, where they met daily. Several circumstances which... more...

The Monday Evening Club of Hartford was an association of most ofthe literary talent of that city, and it included a number of verydistinguished members. The writers, the editors, the lawyers, andthe ministers of the gospel who composed it were more often than notmen of national or international distinction. There was but onepaper at each meeting, and it was likely to be a paper that wouldlater find... more...

RED HANRAHAN. Hanrahan, the hedge schoolmaster, a tall, strong, red-haired young man, came into the barn where some of the men of the village were sitting on Samhain Eve. It had been a dwelling-house, and when the man that owned it had built a better one, he had put the two rooms together, and kept it for a place to store one thing or another. There was a fire on the old hearth, and there were dip... more...

I. THE TALISMAN Towards the end of the month of October 1829 a young man entered the Palais-Royal just as the gaming-houses opened, agreeably to the law which protects a passion by its very nature easily excisable. He mounted the staircase of one of the gambling hells distinguished by the number 36, without too much deliberation. "Your hat, sir, if you please?" a thin, querulous voice called... more...

CHAPTER I STREET MUSIC There was no room for him on the sidewalk, so he took up his position beyond the curbstone. The light from the large arc-lamp overhead, exposed the old man's thin white hair, withered face and threadbare clothes. His sightless eyes were turned toward the passing throng, and his head was slightly bent in an expectant attitude. But the hand that drew the wheezy bow across the... more...

Count Eustache d'Etchegorry's solitary country house had the appearance of a poor man's home, where people do not have enough to eat every day in the week, where the bottles are more frequently filled at the pump than in the cellar, and where they wait until it is dark before lighting the candles. It was an old and sordid building; the walls were crumbling to pieces, the grated, iron... more...

THE DOME He wakened from a charming dream, in which the hat had played a conspicuous part. 'I shouldn't mind having that hat,' he murmured. A darkness which no eye could penetrate surrounded him as he lay in bed. Absolute obscurity was essential to the repose of that singular brain, and he had perfected arrangements for supplying the deficiencies of Nature's night. He touched a... more...