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The works of Plato (Vol. 1 of 6)

Plato

This volume presents an English edition of Plato’s works, with editorial notes, corrected printing errors, and introductions that briefly outline the arguments of each dialogue. It explains that the translator aimed to stay close to the Greek original while retaining the London division into sections. The included material also focuses on Socrates’ trial and defence, describing the charges against him and the arguments made in response.

E-Book · Free to read · English

Craft-guilds of the thirteenth century in Paris

Fred B. Millett

This study examines craft-gilds in thirteenth-century Paris as organized bodies of masters, journeymen, and apprentices bound by rules and supervision. It describes their efforts to protect labor rights, regulate trade, exclude outsiders, and secure control or even monopoly over their crafts. The discussion also distinguishes the gild from the commune and surveys theories about guild origins and early Parisian charters.

E-Book · Free to read · English

The history & traditions of the Moorfields Eye Hospital

E. Treacher Collins

This book presents the first hundred years of Moorfields Eye Hospital after its founding in 1805, the world’s first hospital devoted to a single specialty, ophthalmology. It aims to record the hospital’s traditions while also tracing the people and developments tied to nineteenth-century ophthalmology. The narrative is arranged chronologically and draws on committee minutes, annual reports, biographies, and other historical sources, beginning with the institution’s early promoters and figures such as John Cunningham Saunders and Astley Cooper.

E-Book · Free to read · English

East of Siam

Harry Alverson Franck

Harry Alverson Franck’s travel account follows his journey through French Indochina, especially Annam, Cambodia, Laos, and Saigon. He presents the region as a distinct colonial world east of Siam and contrasts it with China and other Asian lands, while describing shipboard travel, local landscapes, and the people he encounters along the way.

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Fifty-fifty with Bonnie

W. C. Tuttle

A comic Western set around the Seven-A cattle outfit in Montana, the story follows Chuck Warner, a lanky, hard-luck puncher, and his companion Weinie Lopp as they wait at Curlew for a freight and a ranch delivery. When two mismatched women arrive with six trunks and ask for transport, the cowboys try to puzzle out who they are and what they want, while the women quickly take charge of the situation. The opening establishes ranch life, Chuck’s fondness for singing, and the tensions and humor that arise when women unexpectedly enter the outfit’s routine.

E-Book · Free to read · English

According to Ng Loy

W. C. Tuttle

W. C. Tuttle’s short story follows three miners at Trinity Creek: Ng Loy, an old Chinese placer miner, and Lars Anderson and Jimmy Mulcahy, a superstitious Swedish-Irish partnership. When a blizzard traps Lars and Jimmy with dwindling food and broken snowshoes, they set out across the storm to reach their cache and instead stumble onto Loy’s cabin, where they are taken in just in time.

E-Book · Free to read · English

Tippecanoe and cougars two

W. C. Tuttle

W. C. Tuttle’s western story follows Ike Harper, who lives with his pardner Magpie Simpkins near Thunder Creek while they work a small gold mine and endure a hard-to-reach cabin site on a steep mountain road. When Tippecanoe Seeley arrives with the lion-hunter Doctor Aloysius Van Fleet, the men’s shared habit of forgetting becomes central as they try to remember why they have come and what help they need from Harper. The tale centers on frontier confusion, a mountain setting, and the hiring of a guide and cook for an unexplained trip.

E-Book · Free to read · English

A bull movement in Yellow Horse

W. C. Tuttle

Two Western drifters, Cobalt Williams and Slim Hawkins, notice unusual tracks on a road leading toward Yellow Horse and decide to follow them with caution. Their trail brings them to a stranded circus man, Buckley, and his elephant Frederick the First, the last of a failed one-ring circus that has been driven out of Silver Bend. Buckley tries to sell the elephant as a practical beast of burden, while Slim and Cobalt bargain over its price and capabilities.

E-Book · Free to read · English

The wisdom of the Ouija

W. C. Tuttle

A Western short story set around Piperock follows Ike Harper and Dirty Shirt Jones as they encounter Scenery Sims, Wick Smith, and Mrs. Smith in a comic chase tied to a mysterious quarrel and claims about spirits. The tale also brings in Magpie Simpkins, Buck Masterson, and Judge Steele around a board used for asking questions, with the judge recording the messages that come through.

E-Book · Free to read · English

The Pilgrimage of Grace, 1536-1537, and the Exeter Conspiracy, 1538, Volume 2 (of 2)

Madeleine Hope Dodds; Ruth Dodds

This volume examines the Pilgrimage of Grace from the King’s point of view, especially Henry VIII’s replies to the rebels and his refusal to concede their demands. It follows the shift from his private draft answer to the decision to negotiate through Norfolk and Fitzwilliam, with instructions shaped by suspicion, limited pardons, and firm conditions for submission. The narrative also shows royal anxiety over safe-conducts, truce, and the possibility of using negotiation to buy time against the insurgents.

E-Book · Free to read · English

Swift

Carl Van Doren

Carl Van Doren’s biography of Jonathan Swift focuses on the clash between Swift’s proud nature and the poverty and dependence that shaped his early life. It traces the Irish branch of the Swift family, its mixed fortunes and connections, and the circumstances of Swift’s birth in Dublin in 1667. The book also presents Swift as a writer of severe intelligence, marked by cold reason, bitterness, and an enduring sense of injury.

E-Book · Free to read · English

The framed fifty

Karl Decker

The story follows Mike O'Donnell, a former Broadway bartender who has carried his bar and its prized framed fifty-dollar bill to Havana after the coming of Prohibition. There, he runs the place in the old style, serving American visitors and Cuban society while refusing a cash register because it would spoil the bar’s traditions. The bill matters to him as a lasting symbol of the night he first opened his own place in New York, when Red Walker handed him the first fifty-dollar bill for the frame.

E-Book · Free to read · English

Nerves of iron

W. C. Tuttle

A western short story follows Magpie Simpkins and his companion Ike as they travel by trail and meet a small, anxious man named Stonewall who lives near Spotted Dog. Stonewall is the town’s newly elected city marshal, but he admits he lacks the nerve to face two dangerous men, High-Card Hammond and Whisperin’ Wilson, who have taken control of local affairs. The encounter turns on Stonewall’s fear, his failed practice with a six-gun, and the tense situation in the town.

E-Book · Free to read · English

The scarab murder case

S. S. Van Dine

Philo Vance is drawn into the Scarab murder case after the body of Benjamin H. Kyle, a wealthy philanthropist and art patron, is found in the private museum of Egyptologist Dr. Mindrum W. C. Bliss. A rare blue scarab found beside the mutilated body becomes the central clue, while Vance treats the case as a question of motive and psychology rather than a simple matter of physical evidence. The story also introduces Donald Scarlett, an Oxford-educated Egyptology enthusiast and technical expert on the Bliss expeditions, who reaches Vance in obvious distress before the investigation unfolds.

E-Book · Free to read · English

The misdeal

W. C. Tuttle

Four cowboys at the NR ranch are angry because an old rancher’s will has upset their expectations of getting a share from Nick Ralls. As they argue in the bunkhouse, their uneasy partnership and past of stock theft and branding fraud come into view. The story centers on their resentment, their criminal habits, and the problem of what the new arrangement means for them on the Broken Butte range.

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