Fiction Books

INTRODUCTION Which every reader of this book is requested to read before beginning the story. This is a Hill-top Novel. I dedicate it to all who have heart enough, brain enough, and soul enough to understand it. What do I mean by a Hill-top Novel? Well, of late we have been flooded with stories of evil tendencies: a Hill-top Novel is one which raises a protest in favour of purity. Why have not... more...

Part 1 One Wednesday afternoon in late September, Ann Veronica Stanley came down from London in a state of solemn excitement and quite resolved to have things out with her father that very evening. She had trembled on the verge of such a resolution before, but this time quite definitely she made it. A crisis had been reached, and she was almost glad it had been reached. She made up her mind in the... more...

PROLOGUE. It was the opening of the season of eighteen hundred and thirty-two, at the Baths of Wildbad. The evening shadows were beginning to gather over the quiet little German town, and the diligence was expected every minute. Before the door of the principal inn, waiting the arrival of the first visitors of the year, were assembled the three notable personages of Wildbad, accompanied by their... more...

THE DUEL I It was eight o'clock in the morning—the time when the officers, the local officials, and the visitors usually took their morning dip in the sea after the hot, stifling night, and then went into the pavilion to drink tea or coffee. Ivan Andreitch Laevsky, a thin, fair young man of twenty-eight, wearing the cap of a clerk in the Ministry of Finance and with slippers on his feet, coming... more...

THE TITLE OF THIS BOOK The motto of this book is expressed in its title: Britain for the British. At present Britain does not belong to the British: it belongs to a few of the British, who employ the bulk of the population as servants or as workers. It is because Britain does not belong to the British that a few are very rich and the many are very poor. It is because Britain does not belong to the... more...

"The Italian sculptors of the earlier half of the fifteenth century are more than mere forerunners of the great masters of its close, and often reach perfection within the narrow limits which they chose to impose on their work. Their sculpture shares with the paintings of Botticelli and the churches of Brunelleschi that profound expressiveness, that intimate impress of an indwelling soul, which is... more...

CHAPTER I. THE CROWN PRINCE RUNS AWAY The Crown Prince sat in the royal box and swung his legs. This was hardly princely, but the royal legs did not quite reach the floor from the high crimson-velvet seat of his chair. Prince Ferdinand William Otto was bored. His royal robes, consisting of a pair of blue serge trousers, a short Eton jacket, and a stiff, rolling collar of white linen, irked him. He had... more...

Chapter I An Impulse of Mischief"When to mischief mortals bend their will,How soon they find fit instruments of ill."—Pope. Rape of the Lock. It was four o'clock. The little town of Louisiana, Missouri, had slumbered all afternoon in the spring sunshine, but woke suddenly to life as the doors of the big brick school house opened, and the boys and girls poured forth. As the outgoing... more...

IN PARLIAMENT.HOUSE OF COMMONS, DECEMBER 8, 1741.DEBATE ON THE ADDRESS.The commons who attended in the house of lords, having heard his majesty's speech to both houses, returned to their own house, where a copy of it being this day read to them by the speaker, Mr. H.A. HERBERT moved for an address, in words to this effect: Sir, to address the throne on the present occasion, is a custom which, as... more...

The Road Through the San Fernando Valley, toward the hills of Calabasas runs that old road, El Camino Real of the early Mission days. And now replicas of old Mission bells, each suspended in solitary dignity from a rusted iron rod, mark intervals along the dusty way, once a narrow trail worn by the patient feet of that gentle and great padre, Junípero Serra,—a trail from the San Gabriel Valley... more...