Library Of Alexandria imprint: 887 books

Although limited in space, and carefully watched, this quarter serves as the lurking-place, or rendezvous, of a vast number of the very dregs of society in Paris, who flock to the tapis-franc. This word, in the slang of theft and murder, signifies a drinking-shop of the lowest class. A returned convict,...

ON THE SCREEN a scene at Kursk station in Moscow. A bright April day of 1902. A group of friends, who came to see Zinaida Krutitsky and her mOther off to the Crimea, stand on the platform by the sleeping-car. Among them Ivan Osokin, a young man about twentysix. Osokin is visibly agitated although he...

TRANSLATOR'S Serge Aksakoff,1 the author of this Russian classic, was born at Ufa, in the district of Orenburg, on September 20, 1791. His father held some office in the law-court of the town, and his grandfather lived in the country as the owner of large estates, to which Aksakoff ultimately succeeded....

Springtime in the mountains. Graceful slopes and frowning precipices robed in darkest green of hemlock and spruce. Open fields here and there verdant with young grass and springing grain, or moist and brown beneath the plow for the planting time. Hedgerow and underwood fragrant with honeysuckle and wild...

In his earlier works, notably in "The Mystery of a Hansom Cab" and "The Silent House in Pimlico," Mr. Hume won a reputation second to none for plot of the stirring, ingenious, misleading, and finally surprising kind, and for working out his plot in vigorous and picturesque English....

Although the services recorded in the following pages, which your Lordship permits me to dedicate to you, have not resulted in the discovery of any country immediately available for the purposes of colonization, I would yet venture to hope that they have not been fruitlessly undertaken, but that, as...

I am of opinion that Prefaces are very useless things in cases like the present, where the must talk of himself, with little amusement to his readers. I have hesitated whether I should say any thing or nothing; but as it is the fashion to say something, I suppose I must comply. I am well aware that many...

A New Career. A party was assembled in a room of an hotel in Calcutta, at the end of the year 1822. It consisted of a gentleman, a lady in deep mourning, a boy of between fourteen and fifteen, and two girls of thirteen and twelve. "I think you had better accept my offer, Nellie," the gentleman was saying....

About the Beginning. Many books have been written about animals, and very good books too, giving a great deal of information. Most of them are called works of Natural History; and they usually give some description of the birds and beasts, fishes and insects, that are known to man. I am not going to...

My office on this occasion is one which I may well carry as lightly as possible. In our society, I am told, one needs an introduction to a beautiful woman; but I have never heard of men needing an introduction to a beautiful song. Prose before poetry is an unmeaning interruption; for poetry is perhaps...

A word of explanation is needed for this book, which, in attempting to be at once a story and a history, probably fails in either aim. That, however, is for the reader to say. As the writer, I have only to point out where my history ends, my story begins, and clear the way for criticism. Briefly, then,...

Whose Animal Characters Are As Real As Your Own Buddies HE was born one fine April night in a disused ant-bear’s hole, which had been enlarged by his mother and her “sisters of the pack” out of all resemblance to its original self, and for many weeks he knew nothing more of the world than that...

“The adventurous spirits, who haunted the forest and plain, grew fond of their wild life and affected a great contempt for civilization.” You boxed-up, mewed-up artificials, Pent in your piles of mortar and stone, Hugging your finely spun judicials, Adorning externals, externals alone, Vaunting in...

In the Gospels of the only Divine Friend this world has ever had or ever will have, we read of a Voice, a ‘Voice in the Wilderness.’ There have been thousands of such Voices;—most of them ineffectual. All through the world’s history their echoes form a part of the universal record, and from the...