"There appeared from the bushes in front of me, and right in the path, two immense gray wolves . . . Rollo saw them and stopped instantly, giving deep sighs, preparing to snort, I knew . . . To give myself courage, I talked to the horse, slowly turning him around . . . when out of the bushes in front of us, there came a third wolf! The situation was not pleasant and without stopping to think, I said ‘Rollo, we must run him down - now do your best’ and taking a firm hold of the bridle, and bracing myself in the saddle, I struck the horse with my whip and gave an awful scream...

Francis Parkman (1823-1893) has been hailed as one of America’s first great historians and as a master of narrative history. Numerous translations have spread the books around the world. The American writer and literary critic Edmund Wilson (1895-1972) in his book O Canada (1965), described Parkman’s France and England in North America in these terms: The clarity, the momentum and the color of the first volumes of Parkman’s narrative are among the most brilliant achievements of the writing of history as an art...

Parkman has been hailed as one of America's first great historians and as a master of narrative history. Numerous translations have spread the books around the world. The American writer and literary critic Edmund Wilson (1895-1972) in his book "O Canada" (1965), described Parkman’s France and England in North America in these terms: "The clarity, the momentum and the color of the first volumes of Parkman’s narrative are among the most brilliant achievements of the writing of history as an art...

Francis Parkman (1823-1893) has been hailed as one of America's great nineteenth century historians, along with William Prescott, John Lothrop Motley, George Bancroft, and Henry Adams. He is a master of narrative history and is most known for his "The Oregon Trail" and his seven volume work on the history of the French and English in North America. "Montcalm and Wolfe", the seventh and last volume of the series, covers the conflict between England and France for supremacy in the New World from 1745 to 1884...

Sailors Sam Dunlap and Arthur check in to a New York hotel to await their mate Vern Engdahl when a girl shows up proposing to purchase Arthur. They need guys like Arthur to help run the city, and the fact that he fits in a small suitcase is even better. – The Knights of Arthur was first published in the January 1958 edition of Galaxy Science Fiction magazine.

This famous Pohl story explores cybernetic robots and implanted personalities in a way that certainly expanded my way of looking at reality. Is that wall really real? or is it just kinda, sorta real? And who am I? The protagonist, Guy Burckhardt, wakes up screaming from a horrible dream of explosions, searing fire, choking gas and other terrible ways to die. But he wakes up so it must have been just a bad nightmare, right? To find out that piece of information you will need to listen to this inventive and scary story.

THE PRACTICE & SCIENCE OF DRAWINGBY HAROLD SPEEDPREFACEPermit me in the first place to anticipate the disappointment of any student who opens this book with the idea of finding wrinkles on how to draw faces, trees, clouds, or what not, short cuts to excellence in drawing, or any of the tricks so popular with the drawing masters of our grandmothers and still dearly loved by a large number of people. No good can come of such methods, for there are no short cuts to excellence. But help of a very practical kind it is the aim of the following pages to give; although it may be necessary to make a greater call upon the intelligence of the student than these Victorian methods attempted...

Ancient living machines that after millennia of stillness suddenly begin to move under their own power, for reasons that remain a mystery to men. Holati Tate discovered them—then disappeared. Trigger Argee was his closest associate—she means to find him. She's brilliant, beautiful, and skilled in every known martial art. She's worth plenty—dead or alive—to more than one faction in this obscure battle. And she's beginning to have a chilling notion that the long-vanished Masters of the Old Galaxy were wise when they exiled the plasmoids to the most distant and isolated world they knew....

In this collection of essays, Bruce Barton, considered to be among the most influential advertising men of the 20th century, uses history, religion and current events of the 1920s to teach common sense ideals. From Jesus to Beethoven to Napoleon to Abraham Lincoln, Barton uses stories of great individuals to encourage the reader to make the most of life and at the same time to build strong character traits.

LINEAGE LIFE AND LABORS of JOSE RIZAL PHILIPPINE PATRIOTBY AUSTIN CRAIGINTRODUCTION In writing a biography, the author, if he be discriminating, selects, with great care, the salient features of the life story of the one whom he deems worthy of being portrayed as a person possessed of preeminent qualities that make for a character and greatness. Indeed to write biography at all, one should have that nice sense of proportion that makes him instinctively seize upon only those points that do advance his theme...

In 1880’s Boston, Mass. the good life is lead according to all the Victorian era societal rules of the New World. Political ambitions and the business of making money go hand in hand. A Senate seat suddenly opens up due to the current junior senator’s unexpected death, and the political machinations to fill the seat begin. Senatorial candidate John Harrington is a young idealist who thinks that fighting for truth and justice, regardless of political affiliation, is the way. But he is told he can’t possibly win because he isn’t partisan enough...

Faces and Places is a collection of articles on nineteenth century travel, events and personalities by the British journalist Henry Lucy, who wrote for the Daily News, a London newspaper. His open letter To Those About to Become Journalists rings as true today as when it was written.The first article, “Fred” Burnaby, includes a lively account of a balloon trip, while Night and Day on the Cars in Canada and Easter on Les Avants relate Lucy’s experiences of rail travel at that time. Other travel tales (A Night on a Mountain, Mosquitoes and Monaco, and Oysters and Arcachon) provide an insight into the Victorian Englishman’s attitude to Europe...

East by West: a Journey in the Recess is an account of British journalist Henry Lucy's travels across America and on to the Far East during the parliamentary recess in 1883. Lucy was one of the most influential journalists of his day and, as "Toby M.P.", a noted humorist in Punch magazine. His acute powers of observation and light touch make this a most engaging book. It is a fascinating insight into the Englishman's travels abroad within two decades of the American Civil War and the end of Japanese isolationism...

This is a sequel novel to the Scarlet Pimpernel. The second Pimpernel book written by Orczy, it comes (chronologically) third in the series and should be read after Sir Percy Leads the Band and before The Elusive Pimpernel.

Another adventure of the Scarlet pimpernel! As the title suggests, it follows the story of Lord Tony and his wife, Yvonne. It is full of suspense adventure and romance. Lord Tony and Yvonne elope after some disturbing happenings including an angry mob and an assault on Yvonne by her own father. Later a man set on revenge and with the help of Chauvelin steal Yvonne away, and Lord Tony must go to the Scarlet Pimpernel for assistance. Will they be able to save her and her father from the clutches of Pierre Adet and Chauvelin? Will Lord Tony ever even see his wife again?

The enigmatic smile of The Laughing Cavalier of Franz Hals' famous painting invites you to wonder just what mischievousness hides behind that face. In this novel, inspired by the painting, Baroness Orczy recounts the adventures of an ancestor of her famous character, the Scarlet Pimpernel. Set in Holland during the turbulent times of 1623/1624, this is the story of a swashbuckling romanticist, whose desire for wealth and success always seems to be eclipsed by his sense of what is right and gentlemanly...

We are weary of witnessing the greed, selfishness and cruelty of “civilized” man toward the wild creatures of the earth. We are sick of tales of slaughter and pictures of carnage. It is time for a sweeping Reformation; and that is precisely what we now demand. -William Temple Hornaday

In His Steps takes place in the railroad town of Raymond. The main character is the Rev. Henry Maxwell, pastor of the First Church of Raymond, who challenges his congregation to not do anything for a whole year without first asking: “What Would Jesus Do?” (taken from Wikipedia)

Mary Henrietta Kingsley (13 October 1862 – 3 June 1900) was an British explorer and writer who greatly influenced European ideas about Africa and its people. Kingsley was an outspoken critic of European colonialism, a champion for indigenous customs, and a dedicated campaigner for a revised British policy which supported traders and merchants over the needs of settlers and missionaries. Her adventures were extraordinary and fascinating. Among other things she fought with crocodiles, fell into native spear traps and was caught in a tornado on the slopes of Mount Cameroon...

The Ars Poetica, by Horace, also known as Epistula ad Pisones, is a treatise on poetry written in the form of a letter, and published around 18 B.C. In it, Horace defines and exemplifies the nature, scope and correct way of writing poetry. This work, inspired by the book of the same name by Aristotle, is one of the most influential in Latin literature, and the source of famous concepts in poetics, such as “in medias res” and “ut pictura poesis”. The text itself is a poem in 476 dactilic hexameters...

“If you have visions of a middle-aged parasol-bearing lady smiling sweetly from her carriage as she tours Bendigo think again. In 1852, 20 year old clergyman’s daughter Ellen and her brother boarded ship for Melbourne then set off to walk to Bendigo. Dressed in her blue serge skirt which doubled as nightwear, she camped under a tent made of blankets, had mutton, damper and tea most meals and on arrival lent her hand to gold washing. And seemed to enjoy it !And amongst other things she tells of colonial life , transportation, emigration and other gold-fields.But you will need to listen to hear more about bush-rangers and orphans as well as what she did with her parasol.”

The endeavour of small Greek historians to add interest to their work by magnifying the exploits of their countrymen, and piling wonder upon wonder, Lucian first condemned in his Instructions for Writing History, and then caricatured in his True History, wherein is contained the account of a trip to the moon, a piece which must have been enjoyed by Rabelais, which suggested to Cyrano de Bergerac his Voyages to the Moon and to the Sun, and insensibly contributed, perhaps, directly or through Bergerac, to the conception of Gulliver’s Travels. The Icaro-Menippus Dialogue describes another trip to the moon, though its satire is more especially directed against the philosophers.

Deep in the fens of the British coast sits the gloomy mansion that goes by the name Nightmare Abbey. It is inhabited by persons of very low opinion of the human race, and in fact they pride themselves in the depths of their detestation. Others of its denizens believe the ultimate exercise and product of the human mind ought to be chaos. Now let the young master of the house get snared by the wiles of a beautiful young lady. And for good measure, toss in another beautiful young lady. Now Scythrop...

The Ontario Readers is a school book first published in 1909, by the Ontario Ministry of Education, containing short excerpts of literary works, both stories and poems, geared to grade-school age children.

The House of the Vampire is a 1907 novella that is a very unusual vampire story. A young writer comes under the powerful influence of a mysterious older master, who seems to have left a trail of ruined proteges in his wake. The story is as much about the nature of artistic creation as it is a chilling vampire tale.

The Abraham Lincoln Statue at Chicago is accepted as the typical Westerner of the forum, the rostrum, and the tribune, as he stood to be inaugurated under the war-cloud in 1861. But there is another Lincoln as dear to the common people–the Lincoln of happy quotations, the speaker of household words. Instead of the erect, impressive, penetrative platform orator we see a long, gaunt figure, divided between two chairs for comfort, the head bent forward, smiling broadly, the lips curved in laughter, the deep eyes irradiating their caves of wisdom; the story-telling Lincoln, enjoying the enjoyment he gave to others. (from the preface of the book)

Nella Larsen, a writer of the Harlem Renaissance, wrote two brilliant novels that interrogated issues of gender and race. In Passing, her second novel published in 1929, she examines the troubled friendship between two mixed-race women who can pass as white. One, Irene Redfield, marries a black man and lives in Harlem, while the other, Clare Kendry, marries a bigoted white man. Clare re-enters Irene's life after an absence of many years, and stirs up painful questions about identity. (Introduction by Elizabeth Klett)

Quicksand is a 1928 novel by Nella Larsen, a writer of the Harlem Renaissance. It focuses on Helga Crane, a mixed-race woman who is a schoolteacher in the American south. As the novel opens, she suddenly decides to give up her teaching position and go north, back to her roots in Chicago. Helga's restless search for identity is semi-autobiographical, inspired by Larsen's own struggles to reconcile her mixed heritage with the racism of 1920s America. Although this novel was published after 1923, the copyright was never renewed and is therefore in the public domain. (Introduction by Elizabeth Klett)

The experiments herewith reported were undertaken with the view of introducing certain improvements into the oil-drop method of determining e and N and thus obtaining a higher accuracy than had before been possible in the evaluation of these most fundamental constants. From the Physical Review, Vol. II, No. 2

Notes on Nursing was published in 1859 and is a fascinating view into the theories underpinning the early development of modern nursing and public health reform by "the Lady with the Lamp", Florence Nightingale. Emphasising common sense and thought for the patient's care in many more ways than just administering physician-prescribed medicines, this is still a very relevant book for those interested in health or caring for the sick and infirm today.Summary by Cori Samuel.

Layard was a curiosity to sociologists. The planet supported thriving tribes of natives but they were genderless. How could tribes form without families? But Gavin Duncan didn’t care. He had come to Layard to farm vua plants. Their berries cured mental illnesses and were one of the most expensive commodities in the galaxy. He was going to make his fortune if he could just keep the Cytha at bay, a big, dumb animal that could munch through 10 rows of vua in a night. Despite native superstitions he was going to have to hunt and kill the pest if he was to protect his crop...

In a future time, the solar system is powered by one energy source, controlled by one huge organisation, which has plans to use this control to dominate the planets. Unknown to them, a couple of maverick scientists accidentally develop a completely new form of energy supply and threaten the corporation's monopoly. Naturally, the corporation can't allow this to happen... A stunning story about the manipulation of pure energy, climaxing in interstellar conflict.

From Astounding Stories of 1932. Earth is being attacked by horrible black monsters that appear from nowhere and destroy and kill everything and everyone in their paths. Nothing affects them, nothing stops them; they are impervious to all weapons. Earth is doomed. But there is one hope and it rests on the shoulders of 98 brave men. Can they do it? can they find a way of retaliating? Listen and find out.

Clifford Simak deals with the implications of time travel in his own unique way in this story. What if a group of guys did it on their own, without any help from government or industry? On a shoestring,so to speak? Would anyone believe them? What would you do if you could go back 150,000 years to a time when mastodons and saber toothed tigers roamed North America? And what happens when they run out of money? All these questions are explored in the usual humorous, wry Simak way in this story.

The famous physicist Sir Isaac Newton lectured on optics from 1670 - 1672. He worked on the refraction of light into colored beams using prisms and discovered chromatic aberration. He also postulated the corpuscular form of light and an ether to transmit forces between the corpuscles. His "Opticks", first published 1704 contains his postulates about the topic. This is the fourth edition in English, from 1730, which Newton corrected from the third edition before his death.

The power of population is indefinitely greater than the power in the earth to produce subsistence for man. Population, when unchecked, increases in a geometrical ratio. Subsistence increases only in an arithmetical ratio. A slight acquaintance with numbers will show the immensity of the first power in comparison with the second (Malthus).

Riley was an American writer known as the “Hoosier poet”, and made a start writing newspaper verse in Hoosier dialect for the Indianapolis Journal in 1875. His favorite authors were Burns and Dickens. This collection of poems is a romanticized and mostly boy-centered paean to a 19th century rural American owning-class childhood. I’ve included the pieces I did because they’re the ones I most enjoyed when I read a copy of the collection handed down from my great-grandfather.

James Whitcomb Riley was an American writer, poet, and best selling author, born in the town of Greenfield, Indiana. During his lifetime he was known as the "Hoosier Poet" and "Children's Poet" for his dialect works and his children's poetry respectively. His poems tended to be humorous or sentimental, and of the approximately one thousand poems that Riley authored, the majority are in dialect.

James Whitcomb Riley was an American writer, poet, and best-selling author. During his lifetime he was known as the "Hoosier Poet" and "Children's Poet" for his dialect works and his children's poetry respectively. His poems tended to be humorous or sentimental, and of the approximately one thousand poems that Riley authored, the majority are in dialect. Riley began his career writing verses as a sign maker and submitting poetry to newspapers. Thanks in part to an endorsement from poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, he eventually earned successive jobs at Indiana newspaper publishers during the latter 1870s...

How to live on 5 cents a day! How to survive financial ruin without losing your house! How to keep to a bare bones budget and still have money left over to buy books! Tough questions! They were tough questions even in the 1870’s, when Sarah Elizabeth Harper Monmouth penned her quirky memoir, the subtitle of which was “How a Lady, Having Lost a Sufficient Income from Government Bonds by Misplaced Confidence, Reduced to a Little Homestead Whose Entire Income is But .00 per Annum, Resolved to Hold It, Incurring no Debts and Live Within it...

Sir Thomas Henry Hall Caine, CH, KBE (14 May 1853 – 31 August 1931), usually known as Hall Caine, was a British author. He is best known as a novelist and playright of the late Victorian and the Edwardian eras. In his time he was exceedingly popular and at the peak of his success and his novels outsold those of his contemporaries. Many of his novels were also made into films. His novels were primarily romantic in nature, involving the love triangle, but they did also address some of the more serious political and social issues of the day...

The marriage of Mark Wylder and Dorkas Brenden is supposed to end a history of arguments between the two families. However, both people involved do not seem to like the idea. Before the wedding, Mark disappears. But to where? And how will the people around him react to his disappearance?

Le Fanu’s inimitable style continues with The Evil Guest, a murder mystery fraught with dark imagery and mysterious characters. An unwanted guest visiting a dreary and isolated home is murdered; the thriller leads the reader down countless ‘dead’ ends before revealing the identity of the guilty party. (Introduction by Cathy Barratt)

J. Sheridan LeFanu's Gothic mystery novel is narrated by Richard Beckett, a young Englishman abroad in Napoleonic-era France. He falls instantly in love with a mysterious and imperiled Countess, whom he glimpses momentarily behind her black veil. In order to be near her, he takes a room in the Dragon Volant (the Flying Dragon), a haunted inn that has been the site of mysterious disappearances.

EVERY age, every race, has its leaders and heroes. There were over sixty distinct tribes of Indians on this continent, each of which boasted its notable men. The names and deeds of some of these men will live in American history, yet in the true sense they are unknown, because misunderstood. I should like to present some of the greatest chiefs of modern times in the light of the native character and ideals, believing that the American people will gladly do them tardy justice.

"We also have a religion which was given to our forefathers, and has been handed down to us their children. It teaches us to be thankful, to be united, and to love one another! We never quarrel about religion."

Charlotte Turner Smith (1749 – 1806) was an English poet and novelist. She initiated a revival of the English sonnet, helped establish the conventions of Gothic fiction, and wrote political novels of sensibility. It was in 1784, in debtor’s prison with her husband Benjamin, that she wrote and published her first work, Elegiac Sonnets. The work achieved instant success, allowing Charlotte to pay for their release from prison. Smith’s sonnets helped initiate a revival of the form and granted an aura of respectability to her later novels...

Geology is a science of such rapid growth that no apology is expected when from time to time a new text-book is added to those already in the field. The present work, however, is the outcome of the need of a text-book of very simple outline, in which causes and their consequences should be knit together as closely as possible,—a need long felt by the author in his teaching, and perhaps by other teachers also. The author has ventured, therefore, to depart from the common usage which subdivides...

Son of John Westgarth, surveyor-general of customs for Scotland, was born at Edinburgh, in June 1815. He was educated at the high schools at Leith and Edinburgh, and at Dr Bruce’s school at Newcastle-on-Tyne. He then entered the office of G. Young and Company of Leith, who were engaged in the Australian trade, and realizing the possibilities of the new land, decided to emigrate to Australia. He arrived in Melbourne, then a town of three or four thousand inhabitants, in December 1840.When the new colony was constituted Westgarth headed the poll for Melbourne at the election for the legislative council...

“The Creature from Cleveland Depths” also known as “The Lone Wolf” tells the story of a writer and his wife who refuse to move below-ground after the cold-war gets hot. The underground society discovers a decline in their ability to creatively innovate, and must consult with surface dwellers to develop products that satiate the needs of a people living like moles. But the latest product to result from this alliance, “The Tickler” has frightening implications that only our heroes seem to notice. – This story appeared in the December, 1962 issue of “Galaxy” magazine.

"I was one hundred miles from Nowhere—and I mean that literally—when I spotted this girl out of the corner of my eye. I'd been keeping an extra lookout because I still expected the other undead bugger left over from the murder party at Nowhere to be stalking me." In a Post apocalyptic world, the few people left must be strong. And must not hesitate to kill. Of course, killing another Deathlander was one of the chief pleasures and urges of all the solitary wanders in this vast wasteland. Kill and kill again. But this other was a girl and that brought up the second great urge: sex. Which was it to be today? Perhaps both?

A classic locked room mystery, in a not-so-classic setting. (Intro by Karen Savage)

They were a traveling group of Shakespearean players; perfectly harmless, right? Wrong. For one thing, why did they have spacemen costumes in their wardrobes, right next to caveman ones? Why was the girl in charge of backstage suffering from amnesia and agoraphobia? No Great Magic is needed to perform the plays they put on, but sometimes great science. No matter where, or when.

The Moon is Green, Bread Overhead and What's He Doing In There?! Three of the best known and loved Science Fiction short stories by the wonderful Fritz Lieber. Always tongue in cheek, and always with a funny twist, Leiber deftly shows how humans will adapt to or mess up the future. In ways that only humans can.