Short stories and selections for use in the secondary schools

The testimony of librarians as to the kind of books people are reading nowadays is somewhat discouraging to the book-lover who has been brought up in the old traditions. We are...

It was about two o'clock in the afternoon. I had watched these beasts at their feverish exercises for nearly an hour before I perceived that they were gradually hemming me in. T...

This recollection of his youthful days suggested the idea of making the panther answer to this name, now that he began to admire with less fear her graceful swiftness, agility,...

Another bumble-bee went over along the tips of the wheat--burr-rr--as he passed; then a scarlet fly, and next a bright yellow wasp who was telling a friend flying behind him tha...

We had been out about an hour, spying into the garden, looking down on a great part of the courts and buildings, and carefully hiding behind chimneys whenever we saw a black-vei...

The violent struggles of the lava to escape from its fiery bed, and the loud and awful noises by which they were at times, accompanied, suggested the idea that some imprisoned m...

As the people grew more numerous, and their trade one with another increased, the want of current money was still more sensibly felt. To supply the demand, the General Court pas...

And I barely knew how to write! So I should never learn! I must stop short where I was! How angry I was with myself because of the time I had wasted, the lessons I had missed, r...

"Cowardly dog!" said Prince John.--"Sirrah Locksley, do thou shoot, but, if thou hittest such a mark, I will say thou art the first man ever did so. Howe'er it be, thou shalt no...

The next day Cherokee Sal had such rude sepulture [Footnote: Sepulture: burial.] as Roaring-Camp afforded. After her body had been committed to the hillside, there was a formal...

And before me, too, the incidents of his small journey passed. I saw him in the morning getting off the family bed, where it was sometimes warm, and chewing at a crust of bread...

[Footnote: What do you imagine has preceded this selection? What things are contrasted in the account? Do you think that philosophizing helped or hindered the climber? Do you kn...

There dwelt an old man in Monastier, [Footnote: Monastier: a little village in southern France.] of rather unsound intellect according to some, much followed by street-boys, and...

How can I describe the swarming crowds of the bazaar, the constant, noiseless stir of all those bournouses [Footnote: Bournouses: cf. "An Arab Fisherman."] in the semi-darkness!...

The long-tailed cows of the Lama [Footnote: Lama: a priest or monk of Thibet and Mongolia who professes Lamaism, a kind of Buddhism.] herdsmen, they say, are so restive and diff...

These events are succeeded by a few moments of silent waiting. Then suddenly the long lines of soldiers vibrate under a thrill of religious awe; the band, with its great basses...

The nimblest man in the party is sent up the tree, and given a stick wherewith to frighten or poke or pry the cornered animal out of his castle. Compelled to leave the hole, it...