Non fiction ebooks

The Romance of Natural History Second Series

"If it is a scene of painful interest, as surely it is to a well-constituted mind, to stand by and watch the death-struggles of one of the nobler brutes,--a dog or an elephant, for example,--to mark the failing strength, the convulsive throes, the appealing looks, the sobs and sighs, the rattling breath, the glazing eye, the stiffening limbs--how much more exciting is the interest with which we watch the passing away of a dying species. "

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Raleigh

The existing Lives of Raleigh are very numerous. To this day the most interesting of these, as a literary production, is that published in 1736 by William Oldys, afterwards Norroy King at Arms.

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Plain Tales from the Hills

Plain Tales from the Hills (published 1888) is the first collection of short stories by Rudyard Kipling. Out of its 40 stories, "eight-and-twenty", according to Kipling's Preface, were initially published in the Civil and Military Gazette in Lahore, British India, (now in Pakistan) between November 1886 and June 1887. "The remaining tales are, more or less, new."

The title refers, by way of a pun on 'Plain' as the reverse of 'Hills', to the deceptively simple narrative style; and to the fact that many of the stories are set in the Hill Station of Simla - the 'summer capital of the British Raj' during the hot weather. Not all of the stories are, in fact, about life in 'the Hills':

The tales include the first appearances, in book form, of Mrs. Hauksbee, the policeman Strickland and the Soldiers Three (Privates Mulvaney, Ortheris and Learoyd).

The stories are:

* "Lispeth"
* "Three and - an Extra"
* "Thrown Away"
* "Miss Youghal's Sais"
* "Yoked with an Unbeliever'"
* "False Dawn"
* "The Rescue of Pluffles"
* "Cupid's Arrows"
* "The Three Musketeers"
* "His Chance in Life"
* "Watches of the Night"
* "The Other Man"
* "Consequences"
* "The Conversion of Aurelian McGoggin"
* "The Taking of Lungtungpen"
* "A Germ-Destroyer"
* "Kidnapped"
* "The Arrest of Lieutenant Golightly"
* "In the House of Suddhoo"
* "His Wedded Wife"
* "The Broken-link Handicap"
* "Beyond the Pale"
* "In Error"
* "A Bank Fraud"
* "Tods' Amendment"
* "The Daughter of the Regiment"
* "In the Pride of his Youth"
* "Pig"
* "The Rout of the White Hussars"
* "The Bronckhorst Divorce-case"
* "Venus Annodomini"
* "The Bisra of Pooree"
* "A Friend's Friend"
* "The Gate of the Hundred Sorrows"
* "The Madness of Private Ortheris"
* "The Story of Muhammad Din"
* "On the Strength of a Likeness"
* "Wressley of the Foreign Office"
* "By Word of Mouth"
* "To be Filed for Reference"

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Paradise Lost

Milton's story contains two arcs: one of Satan (Lucifer) and another of Adam and Eve. The story of Satan follows the epic convention of large-scale warfare. It begins after Satan and the other rebel angels have been defeated and cast by God into Hell, or as it is also called in the poem, Tartarus. In Pandæmonium, Satan employs his rhetorical skill to organize his followers; he is aided by his lieutenants Mammon and Beelzebub. Belial and Moloch are also present. At the end of the debate, Satan volunteers himself to poison the newly created Earth. He braves the dangers of the Abyss alone in a manner reminiscent of Odysseus or Aeneas.

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The New American Citizen; a Reader for Foreigners

What did new American citizens, through legal immigration,
have to study in the early 20th century? This illustrated book
will be one of the answers. It was published in 1909.

Excerpt from the book's Preface:

To find suitable reading matter for adult
foreign pupils in evening schools has always
been difficult. The ordinary first and second
readers used in day schools, which are mostly
intended for children, contain as a rule little
material of a kind to interest older persons.
Either the ideas themselves are juvenile or the
vocabulary not the most suitable to the needs
of grown-up pupils.

The purpose of the author has been to pre-
pare a series of reading lessons suitable for
adult learners and which should have patriot-
ism as their keynote. Love of country is an
almost universal sentiment, and one that ap-
peals strongly to the class of pupils who make
up the attendance in our evening schools for
foreigners.

To base a series of lessons, as some have
attempted, upon occupations, for instance,
would be pedagogically sound provided all
pupils were equally interested in other occupa-
tions than their own, which is not the case.

To introduce, also, as soon as practicable,
vocabularies variant to some extent from the
words commonly used in daily experience is
believed to be of advantage ; for thereby the
feeling of growth and mastery of language is
developed. Such feeling will incite to the
independent reading of books. The difficulty,
heretofore, has been to find an emotional basis,
universal in its appeal and sufficiently strong
to command the interest of adult pupils of all
ages and nationalities. The appeal of patriot-
ism furnishes the true emotional basis.

The author has had an exceptional oppor-
tunity as a teacher of foreign adult classes in
the city of Newark, New Jersey, to test thor-
oughly the material contained in this reader.
It will be found in practice best fitted for those
who have had a few weeks of instruction in
reading by means of the oral and blackboard
method in general use.

Addison B. Poland
City Superintentent
.......................................................................................

Some digital errors, especially where music is involved.

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Mr. Meeson’s Will

If Haggard-one of the greatest adventure writers of all time-is remembered now, it is for his novels featuring Allan Quatermain, a heroic adventurer whose exploits in Africa form the most important sequence of Haggard's books. Quatermain's adventures are chronicled in such novels as King Solomon's Mines, Allan Quaterman, She, and 11 others.

However, despite the importance of the Quaterman books, many of Haggard's other novels are interesting in their own right. Nada the Lily is the first of four books about the Zulus, all of which are excellent. Eric Brighteyes is rich, fantasy-laden Icelandic saga. The World's Desire (written with Andrew Lang) is a fantasy about the characters in The Odyssey. And there are numerous other titles (many of them reprinted by Wildside Press as part of the Wildside Fantasy Classics series) which bring undeservingly lost Haggard books back into print. Mr. Meeson's Will is just such a book.

Here we get a glimpse of what H. Rider Haggard must have gone through as a starting author, as he slyly takes the reader inside the British publishing industry, where greed and hack writers (he calls them “tame writers”) are prominent. One can easily see how writers of the day could be ruined by publishers as ruthless and unscrupulous as Mr. Meeson. Luckily Haggard could call upon his years of legal training in search of the appropriate remedy for his heroine's tragic plight!

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Horseless Vehicles; Automobiles, Motor Cycles Operated by Steam, Hydro-carbon, Electric and Pneumatic Motors

This book was published in 1900.

A practical treatise for automobilists, manufacturers,
capitalists, investors and everyone interested in the
development, use and care of the automobile.

Including a special chapter on how to build an electric
cab, with detail drawings.


PREFACE.

The rapid advance in the industry appertaining to me-
chanical appliances for locomotion on common roads seems
to need a better representation than it has yet had in book
form, especially in its relation to the automobile industry in
the United States.

It is hoped that the numerous inquiries in relation to
motors and vehicles that have been received by the author
will find a fair and satisfactory reply in the pages of this
work.

Then there need be no apology for the publication of a
work to meet the wants of seekers for information in this
new line of industry which exemplifies a new phase in the
ways and means of a people for gratifying their desires for
new modes and economies in travel for pleasure or business.

In the development of new modes of power resources and
in the improvement of well-known powers for automobile
uses, is involved a vast business aspect and comparatively a
new departure in business lines.

There has been as yet but little published in book form
that has proved satisfactory to the general reader or in-
quirer on the subject of the mechanism and motive power
for common road locomotion.

The technical press in the United States seems to have
been the only source of information and illustration in re-
gard to this newly developed industry, and to this the
author is much indebted for details and illustrations.

It is proposed in this work to bring the practical working
details of the horseless vehicle as clearly as possible to the
understanding of the general reader.

Personal inspection and critical examination of the
mechanism of the motive power and running gear is the
best method of arriving at the facts as to the operation and
durability of so important an element as their power factor.

To some extent this has been afforded and has contributed
much to the detailed description that has been given and
illustrated in this work. A free reference to patent illus-
tration and description does not always give a true concep-
tion of a mechanism that becomes a manufacture after a
patent has been issued ; improvements and changes sug-
gested by trials and experience take the place of the patented
exhibit, when the patented feature in a measure is greatly
changed and sometimes lost.

The theoretical consideration of power and its mathe-
mathical expressions are so fully treated in technical works
on steam, explosion motors, electricity and compressed air,
that a repetition of such topics in this work will not, it is
thought, increase its interest for the general reader or for
the user of the automobile.

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The Story of the Pony Express

This illustrated book was published in 1913 and is an account of the most remarkable mail service ever in existence.

PREFACE


This little volume has but one purpose
— to give an authentic, useful, and read-
able account of the Pony Express. This
wonderful enterprise played an important
part in history, and demonstrated what
American spirit can accomplish. It showed
that the " heroes of sixty-one '' were not
all south of Mason and Dixon's line fight-
ing each other. And, strange to say, little
of a formal nature has been written con-
cerning it.

I have sought to bring to light and make
accessible to all readers the more important
facts of the Pony Express — its inception,
organization and development, its im-
portance to history, its historical back
ground, and some of the anecdotes inci-
dental to its operation.

The subject leads one into a wide range
of fascinating material, all interesting
though much of it is irrelevant. In it-
self this material is fragmentary and in-
coherent. It would be quite easy to fill
many pages with western adventure having
no special bearing upon the central topic.
While I have diverged occasionally from
the thread of the narrative, my purpose
has been merely to give where possible
more background to the story, that the
account as a whole might be more under-
standable in its relation to the general facts
of history.

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Hannah’s Miracle

The lure of riches found in the gold and silver mines of the American West drew men like magnets to try their luck at striking it rich. It drew women too-but to make their fortune other ways. Hannah is a women of fragile beauty and deep mystery who find herself living the hard life of a frontier woman that must make it without the security of a man or a family. Sharing a bond of mutual support and affection with another in her circumstance, they face together, the hardships that takes a toll but not their hearts. A holiday story of hope and sweetness in the midst of hardship and struggle.

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