Wildfireby Zane GreyCHAPTER IFor some reason the desert scene before Lucy Bostil awoke varying emotionsasweet gratitude for the fullness of her life there at the Ford, yet a hauntingremorse that she could not be wholly contenta vague loneliness of soulathrill and a fear for the strangely calling future, glorious, unknown.She longed for something to happen. It might be terrible, so long as it waswonderful. This day, when Lucy had stolen away on a forbidden horse, she waseighteen years old. The thought of her mother, who had died long ago on their...　

Concerning Christian Libertyby Martin LutherCONCERNING CHRISTIAN LIBERTYLETTER OF MARTIN LUTHER TO POPE LEO XAmong those monstrous evils of this age with which I have now forthree years been waging war, I am sometimes compelled to look toyou and to call you to mind, most blessed father Leo. In truth,since you alone are everywhere considered as being the cause ofmy engaging in war, I cannot at any time fail to remember you;and although I have been compelled by the causeless raging ofyour impious flatterers against me to appeal from your seat to a...　

Kenilworthby Walter ScottINTRODUCTIONA certain degree of success, real or supposed, in the delineationof Queen Mary, naturally induced the author to attempt somethingsimilar respecting "her sister and her foe," the celebratedElizabeth. He will not, however, pretend to have approached thetask with the same feelings; for the candid Robertson himselfconfesses having felt the prejudices with which a Scottishman istempted to regard the subject; and what so liberal a historianavows, a poor romance-writer dares not disown. But he hopes theinfluence of a prejudice, almost as natural to him as his n　

The Poet at the Breakfast Tableby Oliver Wendell HolmesPREFACE.In this, the third series of Breakfast-Table conversations, a slightdramatic background shows off a few talkers and writers, aided bycertain silent supernumeraries. The machinery is much like that ofthe two preceding series. Some of the characters must seem like oldacquaintances to those who have read the former papers. As I readthese over for the first time for a number of years, I notice onecharacter; presenting a class of beings who have greatly multipliedduring the interval which separates the earlier and later...　

RECOLLECTIONS OF THE PRIVATE LIFE OF NAPOLEON, V11BY CONSTANTPREMIER VALET DE CHAMBRETRANSLATED BY WALTER CLARK1895CONTENTS:CHAPTER XV. to CHAPTER XXIII.CHAPTER XV.During the second day of the battle of Dresden, at the end of which theEmperor had the attack of fever I mentioned in the preceding chapter, theKing of Naples, or rather Marshal Murat, performed prodigies of valor.Much has been said of this truly extraordinary prince; but only those whosaw him personally could form a correct idea of him, and even they neverknew him perfectly until they had seen him on a field of battle. There...　

THE MYSTERIOUS PORTRAITPART INowhere did so many people pause as before the little picture-shop inthe Shtchukinui Dvor. This little shop contained, indeed, the mostvaried collection of curiosities. The pictures were chieflyoil-paintings covered with dark varnish, in frames of dingy yellow.Winter scenes with white trees; very red sunsets, like ragingconflagrations, a Flemish boor, more like a turkey-cock in cuffs thana human being, were the prevailing subjects. To these must be added afew engravings, such as a portrait of Khozreff-Mirza in a sheepskin...　

The CenciBy Alexander Dumas, pereTHE CENCI1598Should you ever go to Rome and visit the villa Pamphili, no doubt,after having sought under its tall pines and along its canals theshade and freshness so rare in the capital of the Christian world,you will descend towards the Janiculum Hill by a charming road, inthe middle of which you will find the Pauline fountain. Havingpassed this monument, and having lingered a moment on the terrace ofthe church of St. Peter Montorio, which commands the whole of Rome,you will visit the cloister of Bramante, in the middle of which, sunk...　

Unconscious Comediansby Honore de BalzacTranslated by Katharine Prescott WormeleyDEDICATIONTo Monsieur le Comte Jules de Castellane.UNCONSCIOUS COMEDIANSLeon de Lora, our celebrated landscape painter, belongs to one of thenoblest families of the Roussillon (Spanish originally) which,although distinguished for the antiquity of its race, has been doomedfor a century to the proverbial poverty of hidalgos. Coming,light-footed, to Paris from the department of the Eastern Pyrenees,with the sum of eleven francs in his pocket for all viaticum, he had...　

MRS. BULLFROGIt makes me melancholy to see how like fools some very sensiblepeople act in the matter of choosing wives. They perplex theirjudgments by a most undue attention to little niceties ofpersonal appearance, habits, disposition, and other trifles whichconcern nobody but the lady herself. An unhappy gentleman,resolving to wed nothing short of perfection, keeps his heart andhand till both get so old and withered that no tolerable womanwill accept them. Now this is the very height of absurdity. Akind Providence has so skilfully adapted sex to sex and the mass...　

The Countess of Saint GeranBy Alexander Dumas, pereAbout the end of the year 1639, a troop of horsemen arrived, towardsmidday, in a little village at the northern extremity of the provinceof Auvergne, from the direction of Paris. The country folk assembledat the noise, and found it to proceed from the provost of the mountedpolice and his men. The heat was excessive, the horses were bathedin sweat, the horsemen covered with dust, and the party seemed on itsreturn from an important expedition. A man left the escort, andasked an old woman who was spinning at her door if there was not an...　

De Profundisby Oscar Wilde. . . Suffering is one very long moment. We cannot divide it byseasons. We can only record its moods, and chronicle their return.With us time itself does not progress. It revolves. It seems tocircle round one centre of pain. The paralysing immobility of alife every circumstance of which is regulated after an unchangeablepattern, so that we eat and drink and lie down and pray, or kneelat least for prayer, according to the inflexible laws of an ironformula: this immobile quality, that makes each dreadful day in...　

The Past Condition of Organic Natureby Thomas H. HuxleyIN the lecture which I delivered last Monday evening, I endeavoured tosketch in a very brief manner, but as well as the time at my disposalwould permit, the present condition of organic nature, meaning by thatlarge title simply an indication of the great, broad, and generalprinciples which are to be discovered by those who look attentively atthe phenomena of organic nature as at present displayed. The generalresult of our investigations might be summed up thus: we found that themultiplicity of the forms of animal life, great as that may 　

The Jacket (Star-Rover)by Jack LondonCHAPTER IAll my life I have had an awareness of other times and places. Ihave been aware of other persons in me.Oh, and trust me, so haveyou, my reader that is to be. Read back into your childhood, andthis sense of awareness I speak of will be remembered as anexperience of your childhood. You were then not fixed, notcrystallized. You were plastic, a soul in flux, a consciousness andan identity in the process of formingay, of forming andforgetting.You have forgotten much, my reader, and yet, as you read these...　

The Bean-FieldMeanwhile my beans, the length of whose rows, added together,was seven miles already planted, were impatient to be hoed, for theearliest had grown considerably before the latest were in theground; indeed they were not easily to be put off. What was themeaning of this so steady and self-respecting, this small Herculeanlabor, I knew not. I came to love my rows, my beans, though so manymore than I wanted. They attached me to the earth, and so I gotstrength like Antaeus. But why should I raise them? Only Heaven...　

AN ACCOUNT OF EGYPTAN ACCOUNT OFEGYPTBy Herodotus1- Page 2-AN ACCOUNT OF EGYPTNOTEHERODOTUS was born at Halicarnassus, on the southwest coast ofAsia Minor, in the early part of the fifth century, B. C. Of his life we knowalmost nothing, except that he spent much of it traveling, to collect thematerial for his writings, and that he finally settled down at Thurii, in...　

The Complete Anglerby Izaak WaltonTo the Right worshipfulJohn Offleyof Madeley Manor, in the County of Stafford Esquire, My most honoured FriendSir, I have made so ill use of your former favours, as by them to be encouraged to entreat, that they may be enlarged to the patronage and protection of this Book: and I have put on a modest confidence, that I shall not be denied, because it is a discourse of Fish and Fishing, which you know so well, and both love and practice so much.You are assured, though there be ignorant men of another belief, that Angling is an Art: and you know that Art better