Fiction Books

THE LONELY CABIN. Just on the edge of the prairie, in western Iowa, some thirty years since, stood a cabin covering quite a little ground, but only one story high. It was humble enough as a home, but not more so than the early homes of some who have become great. Let us enter. The furniture was scanty, being limited to articles of prime necessity. There was a stove, a table, three chairs, a row of... more...

Harold's Accession. There are, as is well known, two accounts as to Edward the Confessor's death-bed disposition of the English crown. The Norman chroniclers affirm, first, that Edward promised William the crown during his exile in Normandy; secondly, that Siward, Earl of Northumbria, Godwin, and Leofric had taken oath, "serment de la main," to receive him as Seigneur after... more...

I. The interval between the Sessions of 1883 and 1884 was critical for the question of electoral reform which interested Liberals beyond all other questions, but involved the risk of bringing dissensions in the Cabinet to the point of open rupture. As the months went by, Mr. Chamberlain and Lord Hartington used less and less concealment of their differences, while it was well known to all the Cabinet... more...

EDWARD EVERETT IN 1862. The house was full, and murmurous with the pleasant chat and rustling movement of well-dressed persons of both sexes who waited patiently the coming of the orator, looking at the expanse of stage, which was carpeted, and covered with rows of settees that went backward from the footlights to a landscape of charming freshness of color, that might have been set for the "Maid of... more...

THE DREAMER Roger was only seven. He was tall for his age and very thin. He had a thick crop of black hair and his eyes were large and precisely the color of the summer sky that lifted above the Moores' back yard. These were the little boy's only claims to beauty, for even at this time Roger's face was too much of the intellectual type to be handsome. Beauty is seldom intelligent.... more...

CHAPTER I. IN ST. JACOB STRAAT. "The Tree of Knowledge is not that of Life." "It is the Professor von Holzen," said a stout woman who still keeps the egg and butter shop at the corner of St. Jacob Straat in The Hague; she is a Jewess, as, indeed, are most of the denizens of St. Jacob Straat and its neighbour, Bezem Straat, where the fruit-sellers live—"it is the Professor von... more...

CHAPTER I. “Flora, have you forgotten the talk we had about emigration, the morning before our marriage?” was a question rather suddenly put to his young wife, by Lieutenant Lyndsay, as he paused in his walk to and fro the room. The fact is, that he had been pondering over that conversation for the last hour. It had long been forgotten by his wife; who, seated upon the sofa with a young infant of... more...

CHAPTER I OUR HERO t was a murky October day that the hero of our tale, Mr. Sponge, or Soapey Sponge, as his good-natured friends call him, was seen mizzling along Oxford Street, wending his way to the West. Not that there was anything unusual in Sponge being seen in Oxford Street, for when in town his daily perambulations consist of a circuit, commencing from the Bantam Hotel in Bond Street into... more...

CHAPTER I. THE PICKWICKIANS The first ray of light which illumines the gloom, and converts into a dazzling brilliancy that obscurity in which the earlier history of the public career of the immortal Pickwick would appear to be involved, is derived from the perusal of the following entry in the Transactions of the Pickwick Club, which the editor of these papers feels the highest pleasure in laying... more...

The bar didn't have a name. No name of any kind. Not even an indication that it had ever had one. All it said on the outside was: CafeEAT Cocktails which doesn't make a lot of sense. But it was a bar. It had a big TV set going ya-ta-ta ya-ta-ta in three glorious colors, and a jukebox that tried to drown out the TV with that lousy music they play. Anyway, it wasn't a kid hangout. I kind... more...