Fiction Books

THE RENT BABY Adam Grunschlag sat at his street stand in a deep brown study. He heeded not the gathering twilight, or the snow that fell in great white flakes, as yet with an appreciable space between, but with the promise of a coming storm in them. He took no notice of the bustle and stir all about that betokened the approaching holiday. The cries of the huckster hawking oranges from his cart, of the... more...

Phoebe Lyddon frowned, and, as an instant protest, twin dimples peeped into life at the left corner of her bonny mouth. In regarding that attractive ripple the down-drawn eyebrows were forgotten until they rose again into their natural arches. A sweet, childish contour of face chimed with her expression; her full lips were bright as the bunch of ripe wood-strawberries at the breast of her cotton gown;... more...

I was born in London on the eighteenth of June, 1815. The battle of Waterloo was being fought as I entered this world. Thousands were giving up their lives at the moment that life was being bestowed upon me. My father was in that great battle. Would he ever return? My mother was but eighteen years of age. Anxiety for his safety, the exhaustion of giving me life prostrated her delicate constitution. She... more...

PROEM. Not here in our London Ghetto the gates and gaberdines of the olden Ghetto of the Eternal City; yet no lack of signs external by which one may know it, and those who dwell therein. Its narrow streets have no specialty of architecture; its dirt is not picturesque. It is no longer the stage for the high-buskined tragedy of massacre and martyrdom; only for the obscurer, deeper tragedy that evolves... more...

THE DEATH OF LIGOUN Blood for blood, rank for rank. —Thlinket Code. "Hear now the death of Ligoun—" The speaker ceased, or rather suspended utterance, and gazed upon me with an eye of understanding. I held the bottle between our eyes and the fire, indicated with my thumb the depth of the draught, and shoved it over to him; for was he not Palitlum, the Drinker? Many tales had he told me, and... more...

CHAPTER I   They were married in the little Episcopal church in Eagle Pass on a September day in the late eighties. The fact may be verified, I have no doubt, by any who will take the trouble to examine the records, for the toy-like place of worship still stands. The church structure is not, perhaps, so small as my imagination presents it to me; but I cannot see it save with the desert as a... more...

SEND ROUND THE HAT Now this is the creed from the Book of the Bush—Should be simple and plain to a dunce:"If a man's in a hole you must pass round the hatWere he jail-bird or gentleman once." "Is it any harm to wake yer?" It was about nine o'clock in the morning, and, though it was Sunday morning, it was no harm to wake me; but the shearer had mistaken me for a deaf... more...

I — THE TUTOR, KARL IVANITCH On the 12th of August, 18— (just three days after my tenth birthday, when I had been given such wonderful presents), I was awakened at seven o'clock in the morning by Karl Ivanitch slapping the wall close to my head with a fly-flap made of sugar paper and a stick. He did this so roughly that he hit the image of my patron saint suspended to the oaken back of my bed,... more...

The Little Ship. "I have made a nice little ship, of cork, and am going to let it sail in this great basin of water. Now let us fancy this water to be the North-Pacific Ocean, and those small pieces of cork on the side of the basin, to be the Friendly Islands, and this little man standing on the deck of the ship, to be the famous navigator, Captain Cook, going to find them." "Do you know... more...

CHILD'S FIRST PICTURE BOOK     THE FIRE HORSES stand ready in their stalls, and at the sound of the alarm gong the stall chains are let down and each horse goes quickly to his place at the engine, and the big iron collars are clamped around their necks and off they go to the fire, with the engine, at break-neck speed.     THE AUTOMOBILE FIRE ENGINE can go to the fires very swiftly. Many times... more...