The Commonwealth of Oceanaby James Harrington1656JANOTTI, the most excellent describer of the Commonwealth of Venice, divides the whole series of government into two times or periods: the one ending with the liberty of Rome, which was the course or empire, as I may call it, of ancient prudence, first discovered to mankind by God himself in the fabric of the commonwealth of Israel, and afterward picked out of his footsteps in nature, and unanimously followed by the Greeks and Romans; the other beginning with the arms of Caesar, which, extinguishing liberty, were the transition of ancient into modern prudence, introduced by those inundations of Huns, Goths, Vandals, Lombards, Saxons, which, b　

The SportsmanThe Sportsmanby XenophonTranslation by H. G. Dakyns1- Page 2-The SportsmanXenophon the Athenian was born 431 B.C. He was a pupil ofSocrates. He marched with the Spartans, and was exiled from Athens.Sparta gave him land and property in Scillus, where he lived for manyyears before having to move once more, to settle in Corinth. He died in354 B.C.The Sportsman is a manual on hunting hares, deer and wild boar,...　

THE MARK OF DEATH　　THE MOUNTAIN LIMITED was clicking slowly over the rails that trail through the highest and wildest land in America-the western slope of the Rockies.　　Speed was cut down as the big special labored toward the highest point on its line-nearly seven thousand feet above sea level.　　Midnight had struck.　　Outside, the gloomy mountains hung over the track; seemed about to close in on it, and wipe out the train and all its passengers.　　Within the club car of the train, only a handful of men remained in the fortable chairs.　　All of these were dozing away, with the exception of one who sat at the end of the car, puffing furiously at a pipe that was no longer alight. His lips twit　

　The red sun balances on the highest ramparts of the mountains, and in its waning light, the foothills appear to be ablaze. A cool breeze blows down out of the sun and fans through the tall dry grass, which streams like waves of golden fire along the slopes toward the rich and shadowed valley.　In the knee-high grass, he stands with his hands in the pockets of his denim jacket, studying the vineyards below. The vines were pruned during the winter. The new growing season has just begun. The colorful wild mustard that flourished between the rows during the colder months has been chopped back and the stubble plowed under. The earth is dark and fertile.　The vineyards encircle a barn, outbuilding　

THE ILIADby Homertranslated by Samuel ButlerBOOK ISing, O goddess, the anger of Achilles son of Peleus, that broughtcountless ills upon the Achaeans. Many a brave soul did it sendhurrying down to Hades, and many a hero did it yield a prey to dogsand vultures, for so were the counsels of Jove fulfilled from theday on which the son of Atreus, king of men, and great Achilles, firstfell out with one another.And which of the gods was it that set them on to quarrel? It was theson of Jove and Leto; for he was angry with the king and sent apestilence upon the host to plague the people, because the son of...　

　　　　I was following Derry Welfram at a prudent fifty paces when he stumbled, fell face down on the wet tarmac and lay still. I stopped, watching, as nearer hands stretched to help him up, and saw the doubt, the apprehension, the shock flower in the opening mouths of the faces around him. The word that formed in consequence in my own brain was violent, of four letters and unexpressed.　　Derry Welfram lay face down, unmoving, while the fourteen runners for the three-thirty race at York stalked closely past him, the damp jockeys looking down and back with muted curiosity, minds on the business ahead, bodies shivering in the cold near-drizzle of early October. The man was drunk. One could read t　

　Clinch padded to the kitchen and fixed himself a pot of coffee, four eggs scrambled (with ketchup), a quarter-pound of Jimmy Dean sausage, and two slices of whole-wheat toast with grape jam. As he ate, he listened to the radio for a weather report. The temperature outside was forty-one degrees, humidity thirty-five percent, wind blowing from the northeast at seven miles per hour. According to the weatherman, thick fog lay on the highway between Harney and Lake Jesup. Robert Clinch loved to drive in the fog because it gave him a chance to use the amber fog lights on his new Blazer truck. The fog lights had been a $455 option, and his wife, Clarisse, now asleep in the bedroom, was always bit　

The Illustrious Gaudissartby Honore de BalzacTranslated by Katharine Prescott WormeleyDEDICATIONTo Madame la Duchesse de Castries.THE ILLUSTRIOUS GAUDISSARTCHAPTER IThe commercial traveller, a personage unknown to antiquity, is one ofthe striking figures created by the manners and customs of our presentepoch. May he not, in some conceivable order of things, be destined tomark for coming philosophers the great transition which welds a periodof material enterprise to the period of intellectual strength? Ourcentury will bind the realm of isolated power, abounding as it does in...　

Abraham Lincoln and the UnionA Chronicle of the Embattled Northby Nathaniel W. StephensonPREFACEIn spite of a lapse of sixty years, the historian who attempts to portray the era of Lincoln is still faced with almost impossible demands and still confronted with arbitrary points of view. It is out of the question, in a book so brief as this must necessarily be, to meet all these demands or to alter these points of view. Interests that are purely local, events that did not with certainty contribute to the final outcome, gossip, as well as the mere caprice of the scholarthese must obviously be set aside.The task imposed upon the volume resolves itself, at bottom, into just two questions: Why w　

The Enchanted BluffWe had our swim before sundown, and while we were cooking oursupper the oblique rays of light made a dazzling glare on the whitesand about us. The translucent red ball itself sank behind thebrown stretches of cornfield as we sat down to eat, and the warmlayer of air that had rested over the water and our clean sand bargrew fresher and smelled of the rank ironweed and sunflowersgrowing on the flatter shore. The river was brown and sluggish,like any other of the half-dozen streams that water the Nebraskacorn lands. On one shore was an irregular line of bald clay bluffswhere a few scrub oaks with thick trunks and flat, twisted tops...　

The Monster Menby Edgar Rice Burroughs1THE RIFTAs he dropped the last grisly fragment of the dismembered and mutilated body into the small vat of nitric acid that was to devour every trace of the horrid evidence which might easily send him to the gallows, the man sank weakly into a chair and throwing his body forward upon his great, teak desk buried his face in his arms, breaking into dry, moaning sobs.Beads of perspiration followed the seams of his high, wrinkled forehead, replacing the tears which might have lessened the pressure upon his overwrought nerves. His slender frame shook, as with ague, and at times was racked by a convulsive shudder. A sudden step upon the stairway leading to　

　Our specific charge in this unofficial mission has been to search the uninhabited worlds to find another source of the precious spice melange, upon which so much of the Imperium depends. We have documented the journeys of many of our Navigators and Steersmen, searching hundreds of planets. To date, however, we have had no success. The only source of melange in the Known Universe remains the desert world of Arrakis. The Guild, CHOAM, and all other dependents must continue in thrall of the Harkonnen monopoly.　However, the value of exploring outlying territories for new planetary systems and new resources bears its own fruit. The detailed surveys and orbital maps on the attached sheets of rid