Every Friday, Marilyn Knapp Litt, who blogs at ClassicKindle.com, brings us her recommendation of a free classic book to discover (or rediscover) on Kindle. Find more of Marilyn’s recommendations at her blog, ClassicKindle.com, a guide to the best free and inexpensive classic literature for the Kindle. You can also get Marilyn’s blog on Kindle and I recommend that you “Like” the Classic Kindle Facebook page as well so you don’t miss anything. Here’s Marilyn’s post:

Alone in London is an 1869 novel by Hesba Stretton, the pen name of Sarah Smith. She was an extremely popular writer. This is a story of an abandoned child.

Oliver stooped down to bring his eyes nearer to the ground, until he could make out the indistinct outline of the figure of a child, seated on his shop floor, and closely hugging a dog in her arms. Her face looked small to him; it was pale, as if she had been crying quietly, and though he could not see them, a large tear stood on each of her cheeks.

“What little girl are you?” he asked, almost timidly.

“Rey called me Dolly,” answered the child.

“Haven’t you any other name?” inquired old Oliver

“Nosing else but Poppet,” she said; “rey call me Dolly sometimes, and Poppet sometimes. Ris is my little dog, Beppo.”

She introduced the dog by pushing its nose into his hand, and Beppo complacently wagged his tail and licked the old man’s withered fingers.

“What brings you here in my shop, my little woman?” asked Oliver.

“Mammy brought me,” she said, with a stifled sob; “she told me run in rere, Dolly, and stay till mammy comes back, and be a good girl always. Am I a good girl?”

“Yes, yes,” he answered, soothingly; “you’re a very good little girl, I’m sure; and mother ‘ill come back soon, very soon. Let us go to the door, and look for her.”

This is a sentimental passage, but it soon turns out this shop was not randomly chosen . . .

Click here to get your free copy of Alone in London by Hesba Stretton >>>

Every Friday, Marilyn Knapp Litt, who blogs at ClassicKindle.com, brings us her recommendation of a free classic book to discover (or rediscover) on Kindle. Find more of Marilyn’s recommendations at her blog, ClassicKindle.com, a guide to the best free and inexpensive classic literature for the Kindle. You can also get Marilyn’s blog on Kindle and I recommend that you “Like” the Classic Kindle Facebook page as well so you don’t miss anything. Here’s Marilyn’s post:

Those familiar with Upton Sinclair’s 1906 novel about the Chicago stockyards, The Jungle, were not in the least bit surprised to hear of “pink slime.”

One curious thing he had noticed, the very first day, in his profession of shoveler of guts; which was the sharp trick of the floor bosses whenever there chanced to come a “slunk” calf. Any man who knows anything about butchering knows that the flesh of a cow that is about to calve, or has just calved, is not fit for food. A good many of these came every day to the packing houses . . . whoever noticed [a “slunk” calf] would tell the boss, and the boss would start up a conversation with the government inspector, and the two would stroll away. So in a trice . . . they took out these “slunk” calves, and butchered them for meat . . .

Ewww.
The book was a sensation and brought changes in the food packing industry, “not because the public cared anything about the workers, but simply because the public did not want to eat tubercular beef.”
Yes, the American consumer can be picky!
This is not to say the book is all grim:

Grandmother Majauszkiene had lived in the midst of misfortune so long that it had come to be her element, and she talked about starvation, sickness, and death as other people might about weddings and holidays.

Maybe that is not the best example . . .

That was another thing, Grandmother Majauszkiene interrupted herself–this house was unlucky. Every family that lived in it, some one was sure to get consumption. Nobody could tell why that was; there must be something about the house, or the way it was built–some folks said it was because the building had been begun in the dark of the moon. There were dozens of houses that way in Packingtown. Sometimes there would be a particular room that you could point out–if anybody slept in room he was just as good as dead. With this house it had been the Irish first; and then a Bohemian family had lost a child of it–though, to be sure, that was uncertain, since it was hard to tell what was the matter with children who worked in the yards. In those days there had been no law about the age of children–the packers had worked all but the babies. At this remark the family looked puzzled, and Grandmother Majauszkiene again had to make an explanation–that it was against the law for children to work before they were sixteen. What was the sense of that? they asked. They had been thinking of letting little Stanislovas go to work. Well, there was no need to worry, Grandmother Majauszkiene said–the law made no difference except that it forced people to lie about the ages of their children.

Find out why this book has never gone out of print!

Every Friday, Marilyn Knapp Litt, who blogs at ClassicKindle.com, brings us her recommendation of a free classic book to discover (or rediscover) on Kindle. Find more of Marilyn’s recommendations at her blog, ClassicKindle.com, a guide to the best free and inexpensive classic literature for the Kindle. You can also get Marilyn’s blog on Kindle and I recommend that you “Like” the Classic Kindle Facebook page as well so you don’t miss anything. Here’s Marilyn’s post:

Moby Dick is a novel by Herman Melville from 1851. It is a great book, but not an easy book. You can see why in this extract. Melville had been a whaler and he was trying to minutely recreate that way of life; but as the passage continues, you see the narrative moves on with an accident and attempted rescue. (You will have to download the book to find out what happens. I never disclose the plot!)

“Nimble as a cat, Tashtego mounts aloft; and without altering his erect posture, runs straight out upon the overhanging mainyard-arm, to the part where it exactly projects over the hoisted Tun. He has carried with him a light tackle called a whip, consisting of only two parts, travelling through a single-sheaved block. Securing this block, so that it hangs down from the yard-arm, he swings one end of the rope, till it is caught and firmly held by a hand on deck. Then, hand-over-hand, down the other part, the Indian drops through the air, till dexterously he lands on the summit of the head. There—still high elevated above the rest of the company, to whom he vivaciously cries—he seems some Turkish Muezzin calling the good people to prayers from the top of a tower. A short-handled sharp spade being sent up to him, he diligently searches for the proper place to begin breaking into the Tun. In this business he proceeds very heedfully, like a treasure-hunter in some old house, sounding the walls to find where the gold is masoned in. By the time this cautious search is over, a stout iron-bound bucket, precisely like a well-bucket, has been attached to one end of the whip; while the other end, being stretched across the deck, is there held by two or three alert hands. These last now hoist the bucket within grasp of the Indian, to whom another person has reached up a very long pole. Inserting this pole into the bucket, Tashtego downward guides the bucket into the Tun, till it entirely disappears; then giving the word to the seamen at the whip, up comes the bucket again, all bubbling like a dairy-maid’s pail of new milk. Carefully lowered from its height, the full-freighted vessel is caught by an appointed hand, and quickly emptied into a large tub. Then remounting aloft, it again goes through the same round until the deep cistern will yield no more. Towards the end, Tashtego has to ram his long pole harder and harder, and deeper and deeper into the Tun, until some twenty feet of the pole have gone down.

Now, the people of the Pequod had been baling some time in this way; several tubs had been filled with the fragrant sperm; when all at once a queer accident happened. Whether it was that Tashtego, that wild Indian, was so heedless and reckless as to let go for a moment his one-handed hold on the great cabled tackles suspending the head; or whether the place where he stood was so treacherous and oozy; or whether the Evil One himself would have it to fall out so, without stating his particular reasons; how it was exactly, there is no telling now; but, on a sudden, as the eightieth or ninetieth bucket came suckingly up—my God! poor Tashtego—like the twin reciprocating bucket in a veritable well, dropped head-foremost down into this great Tun of Heidelburgh, and with a horrible oily gurgling, went clean out of sight!

“Man overboard!” cried Daggoo, who amid the general consternation first came to his senses. “Swing the bucket this way!” and putting one foot into it, so as the better to secure his slippery hand-hold on the whip itself, the hoisters ran him high up to the top of the head, almost before Tashtego could have reached its interior bottom. Meantime, there was a terrible tumult. Looking over the side, they saw the before lifeless head throbbing and heaving just below the surface of the sea, as if that moment seized with some momentous idea; whereas it was only the poor Indian unconsciously revealing by those struggles the perilous depth to which he had sunk.”

And next time you drink a Starbuck’s, lift it in homage to Melville. His character lent his name to the franchise.

“The chief mate of the Pequod was Starbuck, a native of Nantucket, and a Quaker by descent. He was a long, earnest man, and though born on an icy coast, seemed well adapted to endure hot latitudes, his flesh being hard as twice-baked biscuit. Transported to the Indies, his live blood would not spoil like bottled ale. He must have been born in some time of general drought and famine, or upon one of those fast days for which his state is famous.”

There is something Dickensian about that description . . .

Whether this book was rescued by post-World War I acclaim by the literary establishment or by the popularity of silent movie adaptations, one thing is certain – a top candidate for the Great American Novel was almost forgotten. After publication, it was largely ignored for almost a hundred years. If Moby-Dick is on your “to read” list, don’t neglect it any longer!

Click here to get your free copy of Moby Dick by Herman Melville >>>