This collection of literature attempts to compile many of the classic, timeless works that have stood the test of time and offer them at a reduced, affordable price, in an attractive volume so that everyone can enjoy them.

These are tragic times, sorrowful times, yet great and noble times, for these are days of fiery ordeal whereby mean and petty things are forgotten and the dross of unworthy things burned away. To-day the two great Anglo-Saxon peoples stand united in a noble comradeship for the good of the world and for those generations that are yet to be, a comradeship which I, for one, do most sincerely hope and pray may develop into a veritable brotherhood.

A novel more crowded with beauty and incident than this new romance of love and adventure would be difficult to find. Young Beltane, growing up in the care of Ambrose the Hermit, knows naught of men and women and teeming cities, but one day a mysterious stranger appears, presenting Beltane with a sword and giving him daily lesson in sword play and horsemanship. Lady Helen of Mortain, as she rides thorough the greenwood, meets Beltane and here is the first love scene - indeed the love interest is one of the strongest notes in this remarkable novel.

Young Peter Vibart, an Oxford scholar, and rather arrogant about it, finds himself a pauper at his wealthy guardian uncle's death -- unless he weds an heiress, Lady Sophia Sefton, whom he's never laid eyes on. In his quixotic and overly confident way, he deals with this by refusing to consider even trying to meet the woman, turning down an offer of employment and going on a walking tour.

This collection of literature attempts to compile many of the classic works that have stood the test of time and offer them at a reduced, affordable price, in an attractive volume so that everyone can enjoy them.

I sat fishing. I had not caught anything, of course--I rarely do, nor am I fond of fishing in the very smallest degree, but I fished assiduously all the same, because circumstances demanded it. It had all come about through Lady Warburton, Lisbeth's maternal aunt. Who Lisbeth is you will learn if you trouble to read these veracious narratives--suffice it for the present that she has been an orphan from her youth up, with no living relative save her married sister Julia and her Aunt (with a capital A)--the Lady Warburton aforesaid. Lady Warburton is small and somewhat bony, with a sharp chin...

As I sat of an early summer morning in the shade of a tree, eating fried bacon with a tinker, the thought came to me that I might some day write a book of my own: a book that should treat of the roads and by-roads, of trees, and wind in lonely places, of rapid brooks and lazy streams, of the glory of dawn, the glow of evening, and the purple solitude of night; a book of wayside inns and sequestered taverns; a book of country things and ways and people. And the thought pleased me much.

Myself and Bentley, who, though a good fellow in many ways, is yet a fool in more (hence the prominence of the personal pronoun, for, as every one knows, a fool should give place to his betters)-myself and Bentley, then, were riding home from Hadlow, whither we had been to witness a dog-fight (and I may say a better fight I never saw, the dog I had backed disabling his opponent very effectively in something less than three-quarters of an hour-whereby Bentley owes me a hundred guineas)-we were riding home as I say, and were within a half-mile or so of Tonbridge, when young Harry Raikes came up...

In a glade of the forest, yet not so far but that one might hear the chime of bells stealing across the valley from the great minster of Mortain on a still evening, dwelt Beltane the Smith. Alone he lived in the shadow of the great trees, happy when the piping of the birds was in his ears, and joying to listen to the plash and murmur of the brook that ran merrily beside his hut; or pausing 'twixt the strokes of his ponderous hammer to catch its never failing music. A mighty man was Beltane the Smith, despite his youth already great of stature and comely of feature. Much knew he of woodcraft,...

I sat fishing. I had not caught anything, of course-I rarely do, nor am I fond of fishing in the very smallest degree, but I fished assiduously all the same, because circumstances demanded it. It had all come about through Lady Warburton, Lisbeth's maternal aunt. Who Lisbeth is you will learn if you trouble to read these veracious narratives-suffice it for the present that she has been an orphan from her youth up, with no living relative save her married sister Julia and her Aunt (with a capital A)-the Lady Warburton aforesaid.