Fiction Books

CHAPTER I THE CLUTCHING HAND "Jameson, here's a story I wish you'd follow up," remarked the managing editor of the Star to me one evening after I had turned in an assignment of the late afternoon. He handed me a clipping from the evening edition of the Star and I quickly ran my eye over the headline: "THE CLUTCHING HAND" WINS AGAIN NEW YORK'S MYSTERIOUS MASTER CRIMINAL... more...

STEPHEN CRANE: AN ESTIMATE It hardly profits us to conjecture what Stephen Crane might have written about the World War had he lived. Certainly, he would have been in it, in one capacity or another. No man had a greater talent for war and personal adventure, nor a finer art in describing it. Few writers of recent times could so well describe the poetry of motion as manifested in the surge and flow of... more...

THE DUTCH SENSITIVISTS. In the intellectual history of all countries we find the same phenomenon incessantly recurring. New writers, new artists, new composers arise in revolt against what has delighted their grandfathers and satisfied their fathers. These young men, pressed together at first, by external opposition, into a serried phalanx, gradually win their way, become themselves the delight and... more...

THE GREEK SLAVE AND THE LITTLE ROMAN BOY Ariston, the Greek slave, was busily painting. He stood in a little room with three smooth walls. The fourth side was open upon a court. A little fountain splashed there. Above stretched the brilliant sky of Italy. The August sun shone hotly down. It cut sharp shadows of the columns on the cement floor. This was the master's room. The artist was painting... more...

EXTRACTS FROM ADAM'S DIARY Translated from the original MS. by Mark Twain [NOTE.—I translated a portion of this diary some years ago, and a friend of mine printed a few copies in an incomplete form, but the public never got them. Since then I have deciphered some more of Adam's hieroglyphics, and think he has now become sufficiently important as a public character to justify this... more...

Ruth Morton finished her cup of coffee, brushed a microscopic crumb from her embroidered silk kimono, pushed back her loosely arranged brown hair, and resumed the task of opening her mail. It was in truth a task, and one that consumed an inordinate amount of her valuable time. And her time was extremely valuable. Computed upon the basis of her weekly salary of one thousand dollars, it figured out just... more...

They had marched more than thirty kilometres since dawn, along the white, hot road where occasional thickets of trees threw a moment of shade, then out into the glare again. On either hand, the valley, wide and shallow, glittered with heat; dark green patches of rye, pale young corn, fallow and meadow and black pine woods spread in a dull, hot diagram under a glistening sky. But right in front the... more...

WAITING   Serene, I fold my hands and wait,  Nor care for wind, nor tide, nor sea;  I rave no more 'gainst Time or Fate,  For lo! my own shall come to me.   I stay my haste, I make delays,  For what avails this eager pace?  I stand amid the eternal ways,  And what is mine shall know my face.   Asleep, awake, by night or day,  The friends I seek are seeking me;  No wind can... more...

Chapter II BUY A FARM ON SIGHT I was sitting at a late hour in my room above the college Yard, correcting daily themes. I had sat at a late hour in my room above the college Yard, correcting daily themes, for it seemed an interminable number of years–was it six or seven? I had no great love for it, certainly. Some men who go into teaching, and of course all men who become great teachers, do have a... more...

PREFACE. There were four of us pilgrims—my Wife, our Boy of ten and a half years, the Doctor, and I. My object in going—the others went for the outing—was to gather "local color" for work in Western history. The Ohio River was an important factor in the development of the West. I wished to know the great waterway intimately in its various phases,—to see with my own eyes what the... more...