Excerpt: ...Osborne, in despair; "they\'ll never guess \'P\'!" The next scene was gorgeous. Solomon John, as a Turk, reclined on John Osborne\'s army-blanket. He had on a turban, and a long beard, and all the family shawls. Ann Maria and Elizabeth Eliza were brought in to him, veiled, by the little boys in their Hindoo costumes. This was considered the great scene of the evening, though Elizabeth Eliza was sure she did not know what to do,

Meet the Peterkins, a lovable crew with a notable lack of common sense. These comic tales chronicle their roundabout attempts to solve simple, everyday problems. Cheerful and energetic, the close-knit family of eight resides in a village near Boston. They play their piano from the front porch because the movers left it with the keyboard facing the parlor window, and they\'re ready to raise the ceiling to make way for a towering Christmas tree. Only the timely intervention of "the wise old lady from Philadelphia" keeps them from acting on their more elaborate madcap schemes.Author Lucretia Hale, sister to writer and cleric Edward Everett Hale, helped break new ground in children\'s literature by writing stories to amuse young people rather than instruct or uplift them. These tales first appeared in 1867 in a popular children\'s magazine of the era, and in the course of a decade, the Peterkins became a household word. "The years pass them along to every new generation," noted Harper\'s Bazaar, "with the hint that human nature is about the same everywhere and all the time." Hailed by The New York Times as "a masterpiece" and graced with 153 delightful black-and-white illustrations, this book offers a glimpse of nineteenth-century New England life that charms readers of all ages

Excerpt from Among the Humorists and After-Dinner Speakers, Vol. 1: A New Collection of Humorous Stories and AnecdotesA mountaineer of one of the back counties of North Carolina was arraigned with several others for illicit distilling. Defendant, said the court, What is your name?About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

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.

Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We have not used OCR(Optical Character Recognition), as this leads to bad quality books with introduced typos. (2) In books where there are images such as portraits, maps, sketches etc We have endeavoured to keep the quality of these images, so they represent accurately the original artefact. Although occasionally there may be certain imperfections with these old texts, we feel they deserve to be made available for future generations to enjoy.