Excerpt: The Wheels of Chance, A Bicycling Idyll by H. G. Wells.

Excerpt: Hamlet by William Shakespeare.

Excerpt: Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau by Honore de Balzac, translated by Katharine Prescott Wormeley.

Excerpt: Renascence and Other Poems by Edna St. Vincent Millay.

Contents Renascence ........................................................................................................................................ 4 Interim ............................................................................................................................................... 8 The Suicide ...................................................................................................................................... 13 God?s World .................................................................................................................................... 16 Afternoon on a Hill .......................................................................................................................... 16 Sorrow.............................................................................................................................................. 17 Tavern .............................................................................................................................................. 17 Ashes of Life .............................................................................

Excerpt: Sunday Under Three Heads by Charles Dickens.

Excerpt: Spoon River Anthology by Edgar Lee Masters.

Contents The Hill ........................................................................................................................................................................ 11 Hod Putt ...................................................................................................................................................................... 12 Ollie McGee ............................................................................................................................................................... 13 Fletcher McGee .......................................................................................................................................................... 13 Robert Fulton Tanner ................................................................................................................................................. 14 Cassius Hueffer .......................................................................................................................................................... 14 Serepta Mason ..............................................................................

Excerpt: The Chateau of Prince Polignac by Anthony Trollope.

Excerpt: If you remember, madame, the pleasure your conversation gave to a traveler by recalling Paris to his memory in Milan, you will not be surprised to find him testifying his gratitude for many pleasant evenings passed beside you by laying one of his works at your feet, and begging you to protect it with your name, as in former days that name protected the tales of an ancient writer dear to the Milanese....

Excerpt: To-morrow by Joseph Conrad.

Excerpt: Stalky & Co. by Rudyard Kipling.

Contents ?IN AMBUSH? ................................................................................................................................. 6 SLAVES OF THE LAMP ............................................................................................................... 29 AN UNSAVORY INTERLUDE ...................................................................................................... 46 THE IMPRESSIONISTS ................................................................................................................ 68 THE MORAL REFORMERS ........................................................................................................ 88 A LITTLE PREP ........................................................................................................................... 106 THE FLAG OF THEIR COUNTRY ........................................................................................... 124 THE LAST TERM ........................................................................................................................ 143 SLAVES OF THE LAMP .....................................................

Excerpt: The Trespasser by D. H. Lawrence.

Introduction: In 1828, three years after graduating from Bowdoin College, Hawthorne published his first romance, ?Fanshawe.? It was issued at Boston by Marsh & Capen, but made little or no impression on the public. The motto on the title-page of the original was from Southey: ?Wilt thou go on with me??...

Excerpt: Some Roundabout Papers by William Makepeace Thackeray.

Contents ON SOME CARP AT SANS SOUCI ............................ 4 DE JUVENTUTE.......................................................... 10 ROUND ABOUT THE CHRISTMAS TREE ............ 19...

Excerpt: Pericles, Prince of Tyre by William Shakespeare.

Excerpt: The Phantom ?Rickshaw and Other Ghost Stories by Rudyard Kipling.

Contents THE PHANTOM ?RICKSHAW ...................................................................................................... 4 MY OWN TRUE GHOST STORY................................................................................................ 25 THE STRANGE RIDE OF MORROWBIE JUKES ................................................................... 33 THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING........................................................................................... 54 ?THE FINEST STORY IN THE WORLD? ................................................................................. 87...

Excerpt: If the French have as great an aversion for traveling as the English have a propensity for it, both English and French have perhaps sufficient reasons. Something better than England is everywhere to be found; whereas it is excessively difficult to find the charms of France outside France. Other countries can show admirable scenery, and they frequently offer greater comfort than that of France, which makes but slow progress in that particular. They sometimes display a bewildering magnificence, grandeur, and luxury; they lack neither grace nor noble manners; but the life of the brain, the talent for conversation, the ?Attic salt? so familiar at Paris, the prompt apprehension of what one is thinking, but does not say, the spirit of the unspoken, which is half the French language, is nowhere else to be met with. Hence a Frenchman, whose raillery, as it is, finds so little comprehension, would wither in a foreign land like an uprooted tree....

Excerpt: The Toys to Have. The jolliest indoor games for boys and girls demand a floor, and the home that has no floor upon which games may be played falls so far short of happiness. It must be a floor covered with linoleum or cork carpet, so that toy soldiers and such-like will stand up upon it, and of a color and surface that will take and show chalk marks; the common green colored cork carpet without a pattern is the best of all. It must be no highway to other rooms, and well lit and airy. Occasionally, alas! it must be scrubbed--and then a truce to Floor Games....

Introduction: Near seven years ago, a short while before his death in 1844, John Sterling committed the care of his literary Character and printed Writings to two friends, Archdeacon Hare and myself. His estimate of the bequest was far from overweening; to few men could the small sum-total of his activities in this world seem more inconsiderable than, in those last solemn days, it did to him. He had burnt much; found much unworthy; looking steadfastly into the silent continents of Death and Eternity, a brave man?s judgments about his own sorry work in the field of Time are not apt to be too lenient. But, in fine, here was some portion of his work which the world had already got hold of, and which he could not burn. This too, since it was not to be abolished and annihilated, but must still for some time live and act, he wished to be wisely settled, as the rest had been. And so it was left in charge to us, the survivors, to do for it what we judged fittest, if indeed doing nothing did not seem the fittest to us. This message, communicated after his decease, was naturally a sacred one to Mr. Hare and me....

Excerpt: Lady Susan Vernon to Mr. Vernon. My Dear Brother,--I can no longer refuse myself the pleasure of profiting by your kind invitation when we last parted of spending some weeks with you at Churchhill, and, therefore, if quite convenient to you and Mrs. Vernon to receive me at present, I shall hope within a few days to be introduced to a sister whom I have so long desired to be acquainted with. My kind friends here are most affectionately urgent with me to prolong my stay, but their hospitable and cheerful dispositions lead them too much into society for my present situation and state of mind; and I impatiently look forward to the hour when I shall be admitted into Your delightful retirement....

Excerpt: The Pathfinder by James Fenimore Cooper.