General Books

Unsocial Investments   The “new social conscience” is essentially a class phenomenon. While it pretends to the rôle of inner monitor and guide to conduct for all mankind, it interprets good and evil in class terms. It manifests a special solicitude for the welfare of one social group, and a mute hostility toward another. Labor is its Esau, Capital its Jacob. Let strife arise between workingmen... more...

THE THREE KINGS.BY HENRY W. LONGFELLOW.Three Kings came riding from far away,Melchior and Gaspar and Baltazar;Three Wise Men out of the East were they,And they traveled by night and they slept by day,For their guide was a beautiful, wonderful star.The star was so beautiful, large and clear,That all the other stars of the skyBecame a white mist in the atmosphere,And the Wise Men knew that the coming was... more...

On Henley street, in quiet Stratford town, there stands an old half-timbered house. The panels between the dark beams are of soft-colored yellow plaster. The windows are filled with little diamond panes; and in one of the upper rooms they are guarded with fine wire outside the old glass, which is misty with innumerable names scratched all over it. Poets and princes, wise men and foolish, have scrawled... more...

THE SHEPHERD-BOY.BY EMILY S. OAKEY.Little Roy led his sheep down to pasture,And his cows, by the side of the brook;But his cows never drank any water,And his sheep never needed a crook.For the pasture was gay as a garden,And it glowed with a flowery red;But the meadows had never a grass-blade,And the brooklet—it slept in its bed;And it lay without sparkle or murmur,Nor reflected the blue of the... more...

HANSA, THE LITTLE LAPP MAIDEN.BY KATHARINE LEE. Once upon a time, in a very small village on the borders of one of the great pine forests of Norway, there lived a wood-cutter, named Peder Olsen. He had built himself a little log-house, in which he dwelt with his twin boys, Olaf and Erik, and their little sister Olga. Merry, happy children were these three, full of life and health, and always ready for... more...

But I had known all about him before that. As little boys, we had by heart, in those days, the song which saved “Old Ironsides” from destruction. That was the pet name of the frigate “Constitution,” which was a pet Boston ship, because she had been built at a Boston shipyard, had been sailed with Yankee crews, and, more than once, had brought her prizes into Boston Harbor. We used to spout at... more...

Cassidy gazed long and blankly across the desert. "Wot a life!" he muttered grimly. "Say, wot a life this is!" Cassidy made the words by putting his tongue against his set teeth and forcibly wrenching the sounds out by the roots. The words had been a long time in the making, but now, because of the infinite sourness of their birth and because of the acrid grinding and gritting that had... more...

ABRAHAM LINCOLN. Edited by Ida M. Tarbell. II. LIFE IN INDIANA.—REMOVAL TO ILLINOIS.—LINCOLN STARTS OUT IN LIFE FOR HIMSELF AT TWENTY-ONE.—THE BUILDING OF THE FLATBOAT AND THE TRIP TO NEW ORLEANS.—LINCOLN HIRES OUT AS A GROCERY CLERK IN NEW SALEM.—HIS FIRST VOTE. INDIANA REMINISCENCES OF LINCOLN. Abraham Lincoln grew to manhood in Southern Indiana. When he reached Spencer County in 1816, he... more...

LINCOLN'S FIRST EXPERIENCES IN ILLINOIS. T was in March, 1830, when Abraham Lincoln was twenty-one years of age, that he moved from Indiana to Macon County, Illinois. He spent his first spring in the new country helping his father settle. In the summer of that year he started out for himself, doing various kinds of rough farm work in the neighborhood until March of 1831, when he went to Sangamon... more...

LINCOLN'S LIFE AT NEW SALEM FROM 1832 TO 1836. BERRY AND LINCOLN'S GROCERY.—A SET OF BLACKSTONE'S COMMENTARIES.—BERRY AND LINCOLN TAKE OUT A TAVERN LICENSE.—THE POSTMASTER OF NEW SALEM IN 1833.—LINCOLN BECOMES DEPUTY SURVEYOR.—THE FAILURE OF BERRY AND LINCOLN.—ELECTIONEERING IN ILLINOIS.—LINCOLN CHOSEN ASSEMBLYMAN.—BEGINS TO STUDY LAW.—THE ILLINOIS STATE LEGISLATURE IN... more...