“O Thou, My Austria!‪”‬

A retired major asks whether rain is coming; his former corporal answers by bottling Spanish flies and jotting down “Delphic oracle” as if it were a kind of horse. Then Major Paul von Leskjewitsch finds a blue-ribboned manuscript in his niece’s work-basket—and its opening motto warns that marriage brings regret either way.

On a country estate in southwestern Bohemia, Paul presides over a lively household where patriotic marches, musical quarrels and family plans jostle for attention. His niece Zdena’s “Memoirs” reveal that she has been pondering love and marriage, while Paul suspects she may care for the handsome young officer Harry. But Zdena’s future is already being weighed by others, and her aunt has a very different match in mind. What else has Zdena confided to the pages she never meant her uncle to read?

With centuries of literature, it's inevitable that some will fall through the cracks. We hunt down public domain works and restore them so they're not lost to the world.

Who are we? We're Cairn Press. Our background is in design, publishing, typography, and technology. These skills fuel our mission to create the highest quality Public Domain eBooks available online, at an affordable price. We give them the treatment they deserve; our proprietary process restores books for a better overall user experience in design, readability, and e-reader compatibility.