Downloads & Free Reading Options - Results

Peter Randolph was born a slave in 1825 (?), was freed before the American Civil War, and became a clergyman in the Baptist tradition, dying in 1897. This is his 1893 autobiography. The latter third of the book is a slightly edited re-publication of a pamphlet he published in 1855 (so before the Civil War) entitled “Sketches Of Slave Life." This recording omits chapter fourteen of "From Slave Cabin To Pulpit" because it is only a several-pages-long list of friends of the author with no narrative.

2Secret of Casa Grande

By Helen Randolph

While visiting their friend, Florence, at her home in Mexico, Jo Ann and Peggy noticed a barred window which has no opening into any of the rooms of an ancient adobe house. Curious to find out what it is, the girls tried to investigate but no one seems eager to help them. Undaunted, the girls made plans to get there only to encounter dangers and find a thrilling discovery. - Summary by Mary Escano

3Life Among the Butterflies

By Vance Randolph

Vance Rudolph's informative work about butterflies includes a summary of current (for publication) butterfly literature, butterfly body structure, life cycle, and egg laying process, as well as their classification and survival strategies. - Summary by Tatiana Chichilla

4Tom Clark and His Wife, the Rosicrucian's Story

By P. B. Randolph

One day, during the progress of a long and interesting conversation on the nature of that mysterious thing called the human soul, and in which our fellow passenger had, as usual, taken a leading part, with the endeavor to elicit, as well as impart, information, he suddenly changed color, turned almost deathly pale, and for full five minutes, perhaps more, looked straight into the sky, as if gazing upon the awful and ineffable mysteries of that weird Phantom-land which intuition demonstrates, but cold reason utterly rejects or challenges for tangible proof. Long and steadily gazed the man; and then he shuddered—shuddered as if he had just received some fearful solution of the problem near his heart. And I shuddered also—in pure sympathy with what I could not fairly understand. At length he spoke; but with bated breath, and in tones so low, so deep, so solemn, that it seemed as though a dead, and not a living man, gave utterance to the sounds: "Lara! Lara! Ah, Lovely! would that I had gone then—that I were with thee now!" and he relapsed into silence. (Summary by P.B. Randolph)

5Wonderful Story of Ravalette

By P. B. Randolph

Is it possible to break through the awful barrier—to glimpse through the Night-Curtain that screens and shrouds us from the Phantom-World?—if such there be. Can we know it? Can we by any possibility scan its secrets? Nor are we alone in propounding questions such as these; for every intelligent person, at some period or other, puts them to himself and neighbor, but, in the majority of cases, vainly. The writer hereof, like the great mass of people, has often propounded these queries, the result being a confirmed and indurated scepticism—which scepticism was, almost ruthlessly, swept away by the extraordinary series of events about to be recorded in these pages. - Summary by P. B. Randolph

The unique poetry of Lewis V.F. Randolph is brilliantly brought to life in this wide-ranging collection of some of his best work. A businessman by profession and poet by avocation, Randolph developed his unique perspective on life from both the practicality of an entrepreneur and the creativity of a writer. This perspective is skillfully enhanced and deftly interpreted in these poems, which illustrate both the poet's quest for meaning, "Ah, life is all so like this turbid stream! / And frowning walls hem our imperilled path", and his carefully considered assertions of worldly sagacity, "But, from its source, each drop bears wisest scheme: / Peace wakes at last from fitful dreams of wrath". Randolph writes of the wonders of nature, the glory of God's creation, and our place in a perplexing but uplifting universe. In keeping with the overall theme of the book, Randolph acknowledges the ephemeral nature of this life and the common journey on which we find ourselves, suggesting, "Live in the present; for 't is all thou hast;" and counselling us to "Use every moment as it were thy last!". - Summary by Bruce Kachuk