Fiction Books

CHAPTER I APPLEBORO "Now there was my cousin Eliza," Miss Sally Ruth Dexter once said to me, "who was forced to make her home for thirty years in Vienna! She married an attaché of the Austrian legation, you know; met him while she was visiting in Washington, and she was such a pretty girl and he was such a charming man that they fell in love with each other and got married. Afterward his... more...

THE LIFE OF BROWNING Robert Browning, the poet, was the third of that name. The first Robert Browning, a man of energy and ability, held an important post in the Bank of England. His wife, Margaret Tittle, was a Creole from the West Indies, and at the time of her marriage her property was still in the estates owned by her father near St. Kitts. When their son, the second Robert, was seven years of age,... more...

CHAPTER I IN RUDE BORDER-LAND Even in a community where unsavory reputations were the rule, Mick Kennedy's saloon was of evil repute. In a land new and wild, his establishment was the wildest, partook most of the unsubdued, unevolved character of its surroundings. There, as irresistibly as gravitation calls the falling apple, came from afar and near—mainly from afar—the malcontent, the... more...

A shot from the alarm-gun! Timidly does the citizen examine the dark corners of his house to discover whether any strange man be hid there. The peasant in the field stops his horses to consider whether he would wish to meet with any fugitive, and earn capture-money, or whether he should save some desperate man, in spite of the severe punishment with which every one was threatened who enabled a deserter... more...

ROYAL," said the man's mother that evening, "are you still thinking of Fanny Price?" It was in Gramercy Park. As you may or may not know, Gramercy Park is the least noisy spot in the metropolitan Bedlam. Without being unreasonably aristocratic it is sedate and what agents call exclusive. The park itself is essentially that. Its design is rather English. The use is restricted to... more...

The first Volume of these Poems has already been submitted to general perusal. It was published, as an experiment, which, I hoped, might be of some use to ascertain, how far, by fitting to metrical arrangement a selection of the real language of men in a state of vivid sensation, that sort of pleasure and that quantity of pleasure may be imparted, which a Poet may rationally endeavour to impart. I had... more...

In the autumn of 1903 I used to dine frequently in a restaurant in the Rue de Clichy, Paris. Here were, among others, two waitresses that attracted my attention. One was a beautiful, pale young girl, to whom I never spoke, for she was employed far away from the table which I affected. The other, a stout, middle-aged managing Breton woman, had sole command over my table and me, and gradually she began... more...

In the winter of eighteen hundred and eighteen-nineteen, I had occasion to visit the western section of South Carolina. The public conveyances had taken me to Augusta, in Georgia. There I purchased a horse, a most trusty companion, with whom I had many pleasant experiences: a sorrel, yet retained by me in admiring memory. A valise strapped behind my saddle, with a great coat spread upon that, furnished... more...

CHAPTER I. SYBIL'S SUBTERRANEAN ADVENTURES.Dark den is this,Witch-haunted, devil-built, and filledWith horrid shapes, but not of men or beasts,Or aught with which the affrighted senseHath ever made acquaintance. When Sybil recovered from her death-like swoon, she felt herself being borne slowly on through what seemed a narrow, tortuous underground passage; but the utter darkness, relieved only by... more...

After awhile the blinding light was like actual physical pressure against his tightly squinched eyes. He tried to burrow deeper into the protectively warm, cave-like place where he'd been safe from them for so long. But he couldn't escape them. Their hands, their big, red, hideously smooth hands had him, now. They were tugging and pulling at him with a strength impossible to fight. Still he... more...