Fiction Books

INTRODUCTION How frequently food poisoning occurs is not definitely known. Everybody is aware that certain articles of food are now and again held responsible for more or less severe "attacks of indigestion" or other physiological disturbances that have followed their consumption, but in many cases the evidence for assuming a causal connection is of the slightest. That convenient refuge from... more...

My Birth, Parentage, and Family Pretensions—Unfortunately I prove to be a Detrimental or Younger Son, which is remedied by a trifling accident—I hardly receive the first elements of science from my Father, when the elements conspire against me, and I am left an Orphan. Gentle reader, I was born upon the water—not upon the salt and angry ocean, but upon the fresh and rapid-flowing river. It was in... more...

A DRAMA IN ONE ACT Teja, King of the Goths.Balthilda, Queen.Amalaberga, her mother.Agila,Bishop.Euric}Lords in the former kingdom of the Goths.TheodemirAthanaricIldibad, spearbearer of the King.Haribalt, a warrior.Two Camp Watchers.Teja The scene represents the King's tent. The curtains are open in the background and permit a view through the camp of the Gothic warriors, over toward Vesuvius, and... more...

CHAPTER I (I) The first objects of which he became aware were his own hands clasped on his lap before him, and the cloth cuffs from which they emerged; and it was these latter that puzzled him. So engrossed was he that at first he could not pay attention to the strange sounds in the air about him; for these cuffs, though black, were marked at their upper edges with a purpled line such as prelates wear.... more...

CHAPTER I. THE BOY CHAKA PROPHESIES You ask me, my father, to tell you the tale of the youth of Umslopogaas, holder of the iron Chieftainess, the axe Groan-maker, who was named Bulalio the Slaughterer, and of his love for Nada, the most beautiful of Zulu women. It is long; but you are here for many nights, and, if I live to tell it, it shall be told. Strengthen your heart, my father, for I have much to... more...

It was the evening of Madame Okraska's concert at the old St. James's Hall. London was still the place of the muffled roar and the endearing ugliness. Horse-'buses plied soberly in an unwidened Piccadilly. The private motor was a curiosity. Berlin had not been emulated in an altered Mall nor New York in the façades of giant hotels. The Saturday and Monday pops were still an institution;... more...

In the old times of religious gloom and intolerance lived Richard Digby, the gloomiest and most intolerant of a stern brotherhood. His plan of salvation was so narrow, that, like a plank in a tempestuous sea, it could avail no sinner but himself, who bestrode it triumphantly, and hurled anathemas against the wretches whom he saw struggling with the billows of eternal death. In his view of the matter,... more...

CHAPTER I. THE VILLAGE.—ITS INHABITANTS.—AN OLD MANORHOUSE: AND AN ENGLISHFAMILY; THEIR HISTORY, INVOLVING A MYSTERIOUS EVENT. "Protected by the divinity they adored, supported by the earth which they cultivated, and at peace with themselves, they enjoyed the sweets of life, without dreading or desiring dissolution." Numa Pompilius. In the country of—there is a sequestered hamlet, which I... more...

The Bishop was walking across the fields to afternoon service. It was a hot July day, and he walked slowly—for there was plenty of time—with his eyes fixed on the far-off, shimmering sea. That minstrel of heat, the locust, hidden somewhere in the shade of burning herbage, pulled a long, clear, vibrating bow across his violin, and the sound fell lazily on the still air—the only sound on earth... more...

Aristides Homos, an Emissary of the Altrurian Commonwealth, visited the United States during the summer of 1893 and the fall and winter following. For some weeks or months he was the guest of a well-known man of letters at a hotel in one of our mountain resorts; in the early autumn he spent several days at the great Columbian Exhibition in Chicago; and later he came to New York, where he remained until... more...