Fiction Books

AN INTRODUCTION by Wilson Follett Mr. Cabell, in making ready this second or intended edition of THE CORDS OF VANITY, performs an act of reclamation which is at the same time an act of fresh creation. For the purely reclamatory aspect of what he has done, his reward (so far as that can consist in anything save the doing) must come from insignificantly few directions; so few indeed that he, with a wrily... more...

I When Evelyn Malling, notorious because of his sustained interest in Psychical Research and his work for Professor Stepton, first met the Rev. Marcus Harding, that well-known clergyman was still in the full flow of his many activities. He had been translated from his labors in Liverpool to a West End church in London. There he had proved hitherto an astonishing success. On Hospital Sundays the total... more...

CHAPTER I. THE LETTER FROM BEYOND THE SEA. On the morning of July 21, 1840, the Daily News announced the arrival of the ship Rival at Sydney, New South Wales. As ocean steam navigation had not yet extended so far, the advent of this ship with the English mail created the usual excitement. An eager crowd beset the post-office, waiting for the delivery of the mail; and little knots at the street corners... more...

CHAPTER I. The Trial. Mr. Kent was a very able magistrate. He had sat on the bench for many years and was considered a man of great legal attainments and skill. He very seldom erred in his judgment, and being gifted with a natural shrewdness, he saw the difference at once between a guilty and an innocent man. He rarely erred; long practice had made him an adept in reading faces. But on this morning,... more...

CHAPTER I. "Eighty pounds a year!" My reader can imagine that this was no great fortune. I had little or nothing to spend in kid gloves or cigars; indeed, to speak plain, prosaic English, I went without a good dinner far oftener than I had one. Yet, withal, I was passing rich on eighty pounds a year. My father, Captain Trevelyan, a brave and deserving officer, died when I was a child. My... more...

LETTER I. TO MISS LUCY FREEMAN. NEW HAVEN An unusual sensation possesses my breast—a sensation which I once thought could never pervade it on any occasion whatever. It is pleasure, pleasure, my dear Lucy, on leaving my paternal roof. Could you have believed that the darling child of an indulgent and dearly-beloved mother would feel a gleam of joy at leaving her? But so it is. The melancholy, the... more...

BOOK ONE: TOBY i It was Saturday night—a winter night in which the wind hummed through every draughty crevice between the windows and under the doors and down the chimneys. Outside, in the Hornsey Road, horse-omnibuses rattled by and the shops that were still open at eleven o'clock glistened with light. Up the road, at the butcher's just below the Plough public-house, a small crowd... more...

Chapter I National Characteristics There is in human affairs a reason for everything we see, although not always reason in everything. It is the part of the historian to seek in the archives of a nation the reasons for the facts of common experience and observation, it is the part of the philosopher to moralize upon antecedent causes and present results. Neither of these positions is taken up by the... more...

CARBOONA'S SECRET In an old badger-hole among a maze of bramble-brakes and ancient thickets of thorn and juniper covering the foot of one of Carboona's eastern spurs, one morning very early, as Little-Sweet-Voice, the white-throated sparrow, was singing his earliest song, a great event took place. It was twilight in the badger-hole, and only persons accustomed to odds and ends of day-light... more...

DUTY Back kitchen of a country public house. Micus and Padna seated at a table drinking from pewter pints. Mrs. Cotter enters in response to a call. PADNA (pointing to pint measures)Fill 'em again, ma'am, please. MRS. COTTER (taking pints, and wiping table)Fill 'em again, is it? Indeed I won't do any such thing. MICUSIndeed you will, Mrs. Cotter. MRS. COTTER Don't you know that... more...