Fiction Books

BLACKMAIL Half way along the north side of the main street of Highmarket an ancient stone gateway, imposing enough to suggest that it was originally the entrance to some castellated mansion or manor house, gave access to a square yard, flanked about by equally ancient buildings. What those buildings had been used for in other days was not obvious to the casual and careless observer, but to the least... more...

CHAPTER I. Alexander Crawford sat reading a book which he studied frequently with a profound interest. Not the Bible: that volume had indeed its place of honor in the room, but the book Crawford read was a smaller one; it was stoutly bound and secured by a brass lock, and it was all in manuscript. It was his private ledger, and it contained his bank account. Its contents seemed to give him much solid... more...

or a long time, Henry Bemis had had an ambition. To read a book. Not just the title or the preface, or a page somewhere in the middle. He wanted to read the whole thing, all the way through from beginning to end. A simple ambition perhaps, but in the cluttered life of Henry Bemis, an impossibility. Henry had no time of his own. There was his wife, Agnes who owned that part of it that his employer, Mr.... more...

THE HALL. The ancientest house, and the best for housekeeping in this county or the next, and though the master of it write but squire, I know no lord like him. MERRY BEGGARS. The reader, if he has perused the volumes of the Sketch Book, will probably recollect something of the Bracebridge family, with which I once passed a Christmas. I am now on another visit at the Hall, having been invited to a... more...

CHAPTER IA COLT IS BORN It was high noon in the desert, but there was no dazzling sunlight. Over the earth hung a twilight, a yellow-pink softness that flushed across the sky like the approach of a shadow, covering everything yet concealing nothing, creeping steadily onward, yet seemingly still, until, pressing low over the earth, it took on changing color, from pink to gray, from gray to black–gloom... more...

ELIZA'S HUSBAND "Suppose," I said to one of the junior clerks at our office the other day, "you were asked to describe yourself in a few words, could you do it?" His answer that he could describe me in two was no answer at all. Also the two words were not a description, and were so offensive that I did not continue the conversation. I believe there are but few people who could give... more...

A WORD OF EXPLANATION It was in Warwick Castle that I came across the curious stranger whom I am going to talk about.  He attracted me by three things: his candid simplicity, his marvelous familiarity with ancient armor, and the restfulness of his company—for he did all the talking. We fell together, as modest people will, in the tail of the herd that was being shown through, and he at once began to... more...

DEDICATORY SERMON. BY REV. MARY BAKER EDDY, First pastor of The First Church of Christ, Scientist, Boston, Mass.,Delivered Jan. 6, 1895. TEXT—Psalms xxxvi, 8. "They shall be abundantly satisfied with the fatness of thy house; and thou shalt make them drink of the river of thy pleasures." A new year is a nursling, a babe of time, a prophecy and promise clad in white raiment,... more...

CHAPTER I THE TALISMAN I believe it was the old Egyptians, a very wise people, probably indeed much wiser than we know, for in the leisure of their ample centuries they had time to think out things, who declared that each individual personality is made up of six or seven different elements, although the Bible only allows us three, namely, body, soul, and spirit. The body that the man or woman wore, if... more...

CHAPTER I. "The stars are out, and by their glistening light, I fain would whisper in thine ear a tale; Wilt hear it kindly? and if long and dull Believe me far more deeply grieved than thou." Clear and loud on the hushed silence of the midnight hour rang the chimes of the village clock, from the tall steeple-tower of the quaint old church of Wimbledon, while several ambitious chickens rose... more...