Classic Books

A Tramp Abroad is a work of travel literature, including a mixture of autobiography and fictional events, by American author Mark Twain, published in 1880. The book details a journey by the author, with his friend Harris, through central and southern Europe.

“Nothing is more usual and more natural for those, who pretend to discover anything new to the world in philosophy and the sciences, than to insinuate the praises of their own systems, by decrying all those, which have been advanced before them. and indeed were they content with lamenting that ignorance, which we still lie under in the most important questions, that can come before the tribunal of human reason, there are few, who have an acquaintance with the sciences, that would not readily agree with them.” -Introduction

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible.

Written by famous American essayist, poet, philosopher, abolitionist, naturalist, tax resister, development critic, surveyor, and historian – Henry David Thoreau, the present book ‘A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers’ was first published in the year 1849.

Published in 1931, Bess Streeter Aldrich’s novel ‘A White Bird Flying’ is about Abbie Deal, the matriarch of a pioneer Nebraska family, who has died at the beginning of the story. She left her china and heavy furniture to others, and to her granddaughter Laura – the secret of her dream of finer things. Grandma Deal’s literary aspirations had been thwarted by the hard circumstances of her life, but Laura vows that nothing, no one, will deter her from a successful writing career. Childhood passes, and the more she repeats her vow the more life intervenes.

First published in the year 1851, the present children’s book ‘A Wonder Book for Girls & Boys’ by Nathaniel Hawthorne in which he retells several Greek myths. It was followed by a sequel, ‘Tanglewood Tales’.

The following stories have been written by A. L. O. E. since her arrival in India, for the use of native readers. It is deemed most desirable by those who thoroughly know the people, that their minds should be trained in the first principles of morality, as well as of religion, by means of amusing fictions, as they are particularly fond of stories. A. L. O. E. desires, therefore, to devote her pen to the service of the land of her adoption, as there are, comparatively speaking, hardly any writers who enjoy the advantage of having the peculiar habits and failings of Hindus, Mohammedans, Sikhs, and native converts, perpetually brought before their notice, as is, or should be, the case with a member of a missionary band.
If her little “Indian Stories” be acceptable in her dear native land, she will be thankful; but the object which she chiefly aims at is to write in a way to amuse, and through amusement to instruct, the people of the country of her adoption.

Roxana Delfield, wearing a dress of blue-checked gingham, stout leather shoes and white stockings, and a broad-rimmed hat of rough straw, ran down the narrow path that led from her Grandmother Miller’s farm to the highway leading to the little village of Antietam, Maryland.
The path curved about a rocky ledge, skirted a group of small cedar trees and reached a stone wall where there was an opening just wide enough for one person to squeeze through. Roxy thought it was a fortunate thing that all the people at her Grandmother Miller’s were thin enough to get through this opening, all except Dulcie, the negro cook, who declared her weight “up’ards ob two hunderd pounds.” Dulcie, however, seldom left the farm, and when she did was obliged to take the longer way by the road.

“A fight! A fight! Form a ring!” A dozen or more excited boys shouted these words, and, rushing forward, hastily formed a ring around two playmates who stood in the middle of the road, their hats off, eyes glaring, fists clenched, while they panted with anger, and were on the point of flying at one another with the fury of young wildcats.

Suit-case in one hand, umbrella in the other, he sped along the corridor to the elevator-shaft, arriving in time to catch a glimpse of the lighted roof of the cage sliding into depths below.
“Down!” he shouted; but the glimmering cage disappeared, descending until darkness enveloped it.
Then the young man jammed his hat on his head, seized the suit-case and umbrella, and galloped down the steps. The spiral marble staircase echoed his clattering flight; scrub-women heard him coming and fled; he leaped a pail of water and a mop; several old gentlemen flattened themselves against the wall to give him room; and a blond young person with pencils in her hair lisped “Gee!” as he whizzed past and plunged through the storm-doors, which swung back, closing behind him with a hollow thwack.

“I unpacked my things and went down to await luncheon.
“It was good to be here again in this little old sleepy hostel by the sea. Hostel I say, though it spelt itself without an “s” and even placed a circumflex above the “o.” It made no other pretension. It was very cozy indeed.
“I had been here just a year before, in mid-February, after an attack of influenza. and now I had returned, after an attack of influenza. Nothing was changed. It had been raining when I left, and the waiter—there was but a single, a very old waiter—had told me it was only a shower. That waiter was still here, not a day older. and the shower had not ceased.” -an excerpt

The present romance, the second in the Mysterious Island triad, was originally issued in Paris with the title of L’Abandonné. Jules Verne’s list of stories already ran then to some twenty volumes—a number which has since grown to almost Dumasien proportions. L’Abandonné, like its two companion tales, ran its course as a serial through the Magasin Illustré of education and recreation, before its issue as a boy’s story-book. Its success in both forms seems to have established a record in the race for popularity and a circulation in both the French and English fields of current literature. The present book was translated into English by the late W. H. G. Kingston; and is printed in Everyman’s Library by special exclusive arrangement with Messrs. Sampson Low, Marston & Co., Ltd.

“The young man stood in the field road giving directions to a robust negro who was ploughing the corn, which, in parallel rows, stretched on to the main road a quarter of a mile distant. The negro placed the point of his ploughshare a few inches from the first stalk of corn, wound the line around his wrist, and clucked to his horse. With a jangling jerk of the trace-chains the animal lunged ahead: the polished ploughshare cut into the mellow soil and sped onward, curling the gray earth like shavings, and uprooting and burying the tenacious crab-grass and succulent purslane.” -an excerpt

The present ebook is not a full fledged book but a speech delivered by famous African-American social reformer, abolitionist, orator, writer, and statesman Frederick Douglass at an abolition meeting in New York in the year 1847 on 11th May.

Above Life’s Turmoil by James Allen – Inspirational to Motivational – We cannot alter external things, nor shape other people to our liking, nor mould the world to our wishes but we can alter internal things, -our desires, passions, thoughts, -we can shape our liking to other people, and we can mould the inner world of our own mind in accordance with wisdom, and so reconcile it to the outer world if men and things.

No one who has not been bankrupt at least twice could afford to be so careful about his dress as Mr. Richmond is,” said Josephine.
“He admits a solitary bankruptcy,” said Amber. “Bankruptcy is the official recognition of genius.”
“It certainly is the shortest way to distinction,” said Josephine. “Bankruptcy’s a sort of English Legion of Honour, isn’t it?—a kind of bourgeois decoration.” -an excerpt

Iceland again! Reykjavík again! Here I am upon the same errand as in 1871 and 1874—foolhardiness and folly as it is denounced by some at home. I fancy I can see some of my worthy countrymen at ten o’clock in the morning, clad in dressing-gown and slippers, breakfast half finished, and a copy of some journal that has condescended to take notice of my little expedition in his hand. Umph! he says, 5,000 square miles of uninhabited country, a howling wilderness, nothing but volcanoes, ice, and snow—a man must be a fool to want to go there; no one ever has crossed this cold, desolate region, why, in the name of everything that is worth pounds, shillings, and pence, should any one be mad enough to want to do so now? It would be in vain to refer him to that element in the Anglo-Saxon, which especially longs to associate itself with the unknown; he scouts the idea of possible scientific results; no pulse would quicken in his frame because he stood where no mortal had planted his foot before. He sees it costs money, time, and labour. He thinks of the hard cash going out that might be advantageously invested (and rightly so, too, if he enjoys the felicity of being a paterfamilias); he magnifies the risk a thousandfold, and stamps the whole concern as “utter folly.” Well! well! let our worthy friend stop at home; it is his element. Only it would be as well if he did not go out of his way to anathematise an expedition which costs him not a farthing, which occupies not one moment of his time, and risks not a hair of his head. Everyone, it is said, is mad upon some point or another. Our worthy friend’s mania may be, that he thinks he is specially called upon to spend his energies in breeding a superior race of poultry; mine may be to wander amongst unknown or unfrequented corners of the earth; but so long as I leave his chicken-house unmolested, I think he should leave off sneering at my wild peregrinations. But a truce to critical stay-at-homes, for we are again upon our travels.

Action at Aquila’ is a historical novel by Hervey Allen. It was first published in the year 1938. “Southward, two mighty ranges of the Appalachians shouldered their way into the blue distance like tremendous caravans marching across eternity. Between those parallel ridges the Valley of the Shenandoah lay, apparently, as serene and beautiful as the interior of the Isle of Aves.” -an excerpt

The present fictional novel ‘Action Front’ was written by one of the famous authors of his time Boyd Cable. It was first published in the year 1916. “The last conscious thought in the mind of Private Jock Macalister as he reached the German trench was to get down into it; his next conscious thought to get out of it. Up there on the level there were uncomfortably many bullets, and even as he leaped on the low parapet one of these struck the top of his forehead, ran deflecting over the crown of his head, and away. He dropped limp as a pole-axed bullock, slid and rolled helplessly down into the trench.” -an excerpt

First published in the year 1859, the present book ‘Adam Bede’ was written by one of the foremost novelists and social critic of the Victorian era George Eliot. The story’s plot follows four characters’ rural lives in the fictional community of Hayslope—a rural, pastoral and close-knit community in 1799. The novel revolves around a love “rectangle” among beautiful but self-absorbed Hetty Sorrel; Captain Arthur Donnithorne, the young squire who seduces her; Adam Bede, her unacknowledged suitor; and Dinah Morris, Hetty’s cousin, a fervent, virtuous and beautiful Methodist lay preacher.