Golden treasury of famous books

ballads and stories in rhyme or verse. Part V tells of some of the greatest writers and their work. Part VI is meant to help boys and girls to be good citizens, and to undertake...

XI ROBINSON CRUSOE. LORNA DOONE. HEREWARD. WESTWARD HO! ROUND THE WORLD IN EIGHTY DAYS. TWENTY THOUSAND LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA. MIDSHIPMAN EASY. PETER SIMPLE. TWO YEARS BEFORE TH...

It is an odd reflection how silent a book may seem when it is waiting on a shelf to be read. But once its covers are opened, and our eyes follow the lines of print for page afte...

The best way to understand Charles Dickens is to learn to know him first when he was a boy. Odd though it may sound, we can actually become acquainted with the boy Charles Dicke...

Dickens' popularity can hardly be over-estimated. There is a story that while _Dombey and Son_ was being published in monthly parts, a man who kept a snuff shop in London and ha...

Dickens from his childhood seems to have had a strong desire to leave the world a better place for other people than he had found it for himself. We can trace this feeling in hi...

You have heard at times a strain of music far away. A band, perhaps, is playing the air of some martial song that you know well. The music comes nearer, nearer. You can almost i...

Walter Scott was born August 15th, 1771, in a house belonging to his father at the head of the College Wynd in Edinburgh, Scotland. The family was well-to-do and happily situate...

Shakespeare, as you know, wrote plays. Here is the story of one of these plays: Prospero, an old man, and his daughter, Miranda, a very beautiful girl, lived alone on an island...

These our actors, As I foretold you, were all spirits, and Are melted into air, into thin air: And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, The cloud capp'd towers, the gorgeou...

Shakespeare lived at a time when people, as a rule, did not write and print the details of famous men's lives while they were living or soon after their deaths. We know much of...

Suppose someone who had never heard of the Bible wanted to know what it was, how could we explain, or describe, its nature and character, most clearly and truly? The meaning of...

About ten million copies of the Bible are circulated in a year; this means so many copies either are bought, or given to people without payment, yearly. The reason for such a gr...

A story can scarcely open better than by showing us a young man setting out to find his fortune. One of the most eminent of romantic writers, Alexandre Dumas, begins _The Three...

Let us stop for a little while to consider why we enjoy ourselves so much when we read stories of romance and adventure. Indeed, books of this character are fascinating to almos...

We occasionally meet an odd person, someone out of the common, who is not like other people. Books can be odd too, not like other books, but strikingly individual, and interesti...

The poet's name was Homer. His poem is called _The Iliad_. Some day possibly you will read for yourselves _The Iliad_ in the original Greek, for Homer was a Greek. There are man...

We know a little of the glorious gift of song that the early Greeks themselves enjoyed and left to coming generations of mankind. But other countries, these countries where men...

The story begins with a chapter called Down the Rabbit-Hole. Alice was feeling sleepy, you remember, when suddenly she saw a white rabbit with pink eyes running by close beside...

_The Jungle Book_ by Rudyard Kipling was first published as a book in 1894. Some of the stories had appeared in the magazine _St. Nicholas_ before that date. _The Second Jungle...

A ballad is a simple tale told in simple verse. These tales in verse may be very old, or they may have been composed only a few years ago. But, generally speaking, the old balla...

In times of war, as you know, people sometimes have to go into hiding. Long ago, a nobleman, Earl Douglas, who lived during the reign of King James V of Scotland, had offended t...

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was born in Portland, which is in the state of Maine, in the year 1807. His father and mother both belonged to families that had been settled in the S...

Dante, an Italian poet, was born in Florence, in 1265, a long time ago, and lived in what we call the Middle Ages. Italy then was divided into factions who fought with each othe...

"As I walked through the wilderness of this world, I lighted on a certain place where was a den, and laid me down in that place to sleep; and as I slept, I dreamed a dream. I dr...

Many other novelists, as well as Charles Dickens, have made interesting, delightful characters for us to know and love. In this chapter and the chapter following, we will learn...

Jane Austen is very much like herself, and like no one else. Most of us find people of this description interesting. It is true, that the more we know of Miss Austen, the more i...

Most of us like true stories. Often, when we listen to a story which seems interesting and surprising, perhaps even delightful, we say when the story is ended, "But, is it true?...

We know that the better the game is organized, the better it will be played. In many games, there are two sides, two captains, and an equal number of players on each side. Capta...

Because in this way we are able to trace the long, fascinating story of how mankind--men and women, your fathers and mothers, their fathers and mothers, and so on back for a tho...

A man called James Boswell, who lived in the eighteenth century, chose as his hero a celebrated personage whose name was Samuel Johnson. Boswell was willing, indeed eager and de...

Biography is not only interesting reading, it helps us to understand other people. In this chapter we may discover that there are few better ways of finding out what kind of wor...

Marco Polo, a famous traveller, was born in the City of Venice in 1254, eleven years before the birth of Dante. Dante belonged to Florence: so Marco Polo and Dante both were Ita...

Charles Lamb is a friend of yours whom you may not know yet; but, when you meet him, you will soon find yourself thinking of Charles Lamb as a friend. He is one of the rare pers...

Cowper, the poet, who wrote _John Gilpin_, is a delightful letter writer. He had a number of pets living with him, and these little friends of his, goldfinches, pigeons, a cat a...

The youngest of the great English poets is John Keats. When he was little more than a boy, early in the nineteenth century, he wrote poetry. One of his poems is called "Ode to a...

It is good to know the names of the great English poets and the order of time in which they come; we may write out such a list for ourselves if we hope to enjoy poetry. Many of...

Most of us, no matter where we may happen to live, are not far away from a newspaper office. We may walk down a village street and stop at the door of a building where a newspap...

The name of this chapter, Afterword, seems as if it were an ending. But some endings in reality are beginnings. We all know the look of a catalogue of seeds, with its brilliantl...