Fiction Books

Gentlemen:— There is no need, I apprehend, that I should undertake to impress you with a sense either of the need or of the importance of our assemblage here to-day. The fact of your coming here is, of itself, the clearest evidence of your warm acquiescence in the summons to this meeting, and of your cordial interest in the objects which it purposes to consider. Nothing has surprised and gratified me... more...

CHAPTER ONE EXPERIMENTS IN EGYPT AND EURASIA Thousands of years before the city of Rome was ringed with its six miles of stone wall, other peoples in Asia, Eastern Europe and Africa were building civilizations. New techniques of excavation, identification and preservation, subsidized by an increasingly affluent human society, and developed during the past two centuries of archeological research have... more...

THE YELLOW STREAK He came out to Shanghai a generation ago, in those days when Shanghai was not as respectable as it is now—whatever that says to you. It was, of course, a great change from Home, and its crude pleasures and crude companions gave him somewhat of a shock. For he was of decent stock, with a certain sense of the fitness of things, and the beach-combers, adventurers, rough traders and... more...

CHAPTER I On the day Fort Sumter surrendered I was seventeen years old, having been born April 14, 1844. Like other boys, I proposed enlisting, but my father refused consent; and at that time youths under eighteen years would not be accepted without the consent of parents. In July of the following year, when the news of McClellan's retreat on the Peninsula was published, I was satisfied that the... more...

CHAPTER I. TAXATION AND GOVERNMENT. In that strangely beautiful story, "The Cloister and the Hearth," in which Charles Reade has drawn such a vivid picture of human life at the close of the Middle Ages, there is a good description of the siege of a revolted town by the army of the Duke of Burgundy. Arrows whiz, catapults hurl their ponderous stones, wooden towers are built, secret mines are... more...

GERMAN SOUP.—Good, fresh beef and some cracked bone are all important for soup making. The stock when nutritious, and properly prepared, forms the basis of meat soups. To make the stock great care must be taken in boiling the meat. Put your meat on in cold water, enough to cover the meat, set on the stove to boil, for four hours, slowly but steadily; never boil very fast. When meat becomes tender,... more...

CHAPTER I A Young Gentleman of Wealth and Fashion—a noble resolve—the flatterers—the Midnight Encounter—an Adventure—the Courtezan—Temptation triumphant—how the Night was passed. 'What a happy dog I ought to be!' exclaimed Frank Sydney, as he reposed his slippered feet upon the fender, and sipped his third glass of old Madeira, one winter's evening in the year 18—, in the... more...

CHAPTER IOVERTURE BY THE BIRDS"We would have you to wit, that on eggs though we sit,And are spiked on the spit, and are baked in a pan;Birds are older by far than your ancestors are,And made love and made war, ere the making of man!" (Andrew Lang.) A party of Swallows perched on the telegraph wires beside the highway where it passed Orchard Farm. They were resting after a breakfast of insects,... more...

"Just suppose," said Morgan, "that I did believe you. Just for argument." He glanced up at the man across the restaurant table. "Where would we go from here?" The man shifted uneasily in his seat. He was silent, staring down at his plate. Not a strange-looking man, Morgan thought. Rather ordinary, in fact. A plain face, nose a little too long, fingers a little too dainty, a suit... more...

IT SEEMED they had argued for years as they were arguing tonight. The man paced back and forth chain-smoking cigarettes; the woman sat motionless, watching him. They glanced at their watches with fearful eyes. They heard, with acutely alert ears, the goings and comings of people in the hall; heard the shattering blast of rockets in the sky above the city. And they argued."So you're going... more...