Fiction Books

A PROLOGUE Exactly twenty minutes after young Benton dismounted from his big rangy black before the door of a low adobe saloon that fronted upon one of the narrow crooked streets of old Las Vegas, he glanced into the eyes of the thin-lipped croupier and laughed. "You've got 'em. Seventy-four good old Texas dollars." He held up a coin between his thumb and forefinger. "I've... more...

CHAPTER I IN THE STORM The horseman rode slowly toward the west, stopping once or twice to examine the wide circle of the horizon with eyes that were trained to note every aspect of the wilderness. On his right the plains melted away in gentle swell after swell, until they met the horizon. Their brown surface was broken only by the spiked and thorny cactus and stray bits of chaparral. On his left was... more...

CHAPTER I THE PRISONERS A boy and a man sat in a room of a stone house in the ancient City of Mexico, capital in turn of Aztec, Spaniard and Mexican. They could see through the narrow windows masses of low buildings and tile roofs, and beyond, the swelling shape of great mountains, standing clear against the blue sky. But they had looked upon them so often that the mind took no note of the luminous... more...

PREFACE. In this book Dr. Schaffle seeks to carry out still further the idea which he developed in his last book (The Impossibility of Social Democracy) of the essential difference between a socialistic policy and what he calls a Positive Social Policy, proceeding constructively upon the basis of the existing social order. He emphatically vindicates the Emperor William’s policy, as shown in the... more...

CHAPTER I. THE COMMISSARY IS CALLED. In the Paris of the first half of this century there was no darker, dingier, or more forbidding quarter than that which lay north of the Rue de Rivoli, round about the great central market, commonly called the Halles. The worst part of it, perhaps, was the Rue Assiette d'Etain, or Tinplate Street. All day evil-looking loafers lounged about its doorways, nodding... more...

CHAPTER I "As well give up the Bible at once, as our belief in apparitions."—Wesley. The house cried out to me for help. In the after-knowledge I now possess of what was to happen there, that impression is not more clearly definite than it was at my first sight of the place. Let me at once set down that this is not the story of a haunted house. It is, or was, a beleaguered house; strangely... more...

Honath the Pursemaker was hauled from the nets an hour before the rest of the prisoners, as befitted his role as the arch-doubter of them all. It was not yet dawn, but his captors led him in great bounds through the endless, musky-perfumed orchid gardens, small dark shapes with crooked legs, hunched shoulders, slim hairless tails carried, like his, in concentric spirals wound clockwise. Behind them... more...

CHAPTER I A Wet-day Party Drip, drip, drip! The rain came pouring down on a certain September afternoon, turning the tennis lawn to a swamp, dashing the bloom off the roses, spoiling the geraniums, and driving even the blackbirds and thrushes to seek shelter inside the summer house. It was that steady, settled, hopeless rain that does not hold out the slightest promise of ever stopping; there was not a... more...

The Third Day at Stone’s River. While the heroic commander of the Union Army, with fearless confidence in his remaining troops, was hurling the hard-hitting brigades of the left and center upon Hardee’s victorious advance during the first day of the fight at Stones River, kindling anew the dying embers of hope in the breasts of the retreating soldiers of the right, and by his exalted courage... more...

"I'm N. G.—that's a cinch! The sooner I chuck it the better!" Caught in the swirl of the busy city's midday rush, engulfed in Broadway's swift moving flood of hustling humanity, jostled unceremoniously by the careless, indifferent crowds, discouraged from stemming further the tide of pushing, elbowing men and women who hurried up and down the great thoroughfare, Howard... more...