Fiction Books

INTRODUCTION "His varied life is toss'd on Faction's wave, A leader now, and now a party's slave; And shall his character a waverer's seem? If that's a fault, impute it not to him; He play'd a stake, and fortune threw the die; So look upon him with a brother's eye. We would for him an interest create, His own his virtues, and his faults his fate." Schiller.... more...

It is doubtful if Aggie and I would have known anything about Tish's plan had Aggie not seen the advertisement in the newspaper. She came to my house at once in violent excitement and with her bonnet over her ear, and gave me the newspaper clipping to read. It said: "Wanted: A small donkey. Must be gentle, female, and if possible answer to the name of Modestine. Address X 27, Morning... more...

CHAPTER ONE: OMAS, ALICE, AND LINNA I don't suppose there is any use in trying to find out when the game of "Jack Stones" was first played. No one can tell. It certainly is a good many hundred years old. All boys and girls know how to play it. There is the little rubber ball, which you toss in the air, catch up one of the odd iron prongs, without touching another, and while the ball is... more...

I PLAN A VOYAGE By the bequest of an elder brother, I was left enough money to see me through a small college in Ohio, and to secure me four years in a medical school in the East. Why I chose medicine I hardly know. Possibly the career of a surgeon attracted the adventurous element in me. Perhaps, coming of a family of doctors, I merely followed the line of least resistance. It may be, indirectly but... more...

PROLOGUE. The girl came into the room with a darting movement like a swallow, looked round her with the same birdlike quickness, and then ran across the polished floor to where a young man sat on a sofa with one leg laid along it. "I have saved you this dance, Quentin," she said, pronouncing the name with a pretty staccato. "You must be lonely not dancing, so I will sit with you. What shall... more...

I A MASTER OF COBWEBS I Alixe Van Kuyp sat in the first-tier box presented to her husband with the accustomed heavy courtesy of the Société Harmonique. She went early to the hall that she might hear the entire music-making of the evening—Van Kuyp's tone-poem, Sordello, was on the programme between a Weber overture and a Beethoven symphony, an unusual honour for a young American composer. If... more...

The Chancellor's private washroom, discreetly off the innermost of his official suite of offices, was a dream of gleaming black porcelain and solid gold. Each spout, each faucet, was a gracefully stylized mermaid, the combination stall shower-steam room a marvel of hydraulic comfort and decor with variable lighting plotted to give the user every sort of beneficial ray, from ultraviolet to black... more...

TheArt of Iugling orLegerdemaine.     Heretofore we haue runne ouer the two pestiferous carbuncles in the commonwealth, the Egyptians and common Canters: the poore Canters we haue canuased meetely well, it now remaines to proceede where I left, ond to goe forward with that before I promised: St. Quintane be my good speede, I know I haue runne thorow the hands of many, censured of diuers, & girded... more...

CHAPTER I "Return at ten-thirty," the General said to his chauffeur, and then they entered the corridor of the hotel. Montague gazed about him, and found himself trembling just a little with anticipation. It was not the magnificence of the place. The quiet uptown hotel would have seemed magnificent to him, fresh as he was from the country; but, he did not see the marble columns and the gilded... more...

itting at his desk, Colonel Halter brought the images on the telescreen into focus. Four booster tugs were fastening, like sky-barnacles, onto the hull of the ancient derelict, Alpha. He watched as they swung her around, stern down, and sank with her through the blackness, toward the bluish-white, moon-lighted arc of Earth a thousand miles below. He pressed a button. The image of tugs and hull faded... more...