Fiction Books

Chapter 1 In my opinion, it is impossible to create characters until one has spent a long time in studying men, as it is impossible to speak a language until it has been seriously acquired. Not being old enough to invent, I content myself with narrating, and I beg the reader to assure himself of the truth of a story in which all the characters, with the exception of the heroine, are still alive.... more...

Field and museum studies of the wood rats of Colorado have revealed the existence of an unnamed subspecies of Neotoma mexicana in eastern Colorado south of the Arkansas River. The characters of the new subspecies are most distinctive in the northeastern part of its range near Two Buttes and Higbee. It differs in cranial characters from N. m. fallax and N. m. inopinata and averages slightly larger, but... more...

CHAPTER I GREEN FIELDS AND PASTURES NEW The Imperial Limited lurched with a swing around the last hairpin curve of the Yale canyon. Ahead opened out a timbered valley,—narrow on its floor, flanked with bold mountains, but nevertheless a valley,—down which the rails lay straight and shining on an easy grade. The river that for a hundred miles had boiled and snarled parallel to the tracks, roaring... more...

INTRODUCTION The combined qualities of the realist and the idealist which Dickens possessed to a remarkable degree, together with his naturally jovial attitude toward life in general, seem to have given him a remarkably happy feeling toward Christmas, though the privations and hardships of his boyhood could have allowed him but little real experience with this day of days. Dickens gave his first formal... more...

Father and I “Argue the Point.” “Hullo, father!” I sang out, when we had got a little way out from the pontoon and opened the mouth of the harbour, noticing, as I looked over my shoulder to see how we were steering, a string of flags being run up aboard the old Saint Vincent. “They’re signalling away like mad this morning all over the shop! First, atop of the dockyard semaphore; and then... more...

CHAPTER I—START IN LIFE I was born in the year 1632, in the city of York, of a good family, though not of that country, my father being a foreigner of Bremen, who settled first at Hull.  He got a good estate by merchandise, and leaving off his trade, lived afterwards at York, from whence he had married my mother, whose relations were named Robinson, a very good family in that country, and from whom... more...

CHAPTER I When the widow of Martino Consalvi married young Corbario, people shook their heads and said that she was making a great mistake. Consalvi had been dead a good many years, but as yet no one had thought it was time to say that his widow was no longer young and beautiful, as she had always been. Many rich widows remain young and beautiful as much as a quarter of a century, or even longer, and... more...

REPORT. On the 13th of February, A.D. 1851, one John Caphart, of Norfolk, Va., came to Boston, in pursuit of one Shadrach, alleged to be a fugitive slave and the property of John Debree, a purser in the navy, and attended by Seth J. Thomas, Esq., as counsel, made his complaint, as agent and attorney of the said owner, before George T. Curtis, Esq., U. S. Commissioner. On the evening of the 14th, the... more...

CHAPTER I. THE TAPIS-FRANC. It was on a cold and rainy night, towards the end of October, 1838, that a tall and powerful man, with an old broad-brimmed straw hat upon his head, and clad in a blue cotton carter's frock, which hung loosely over trousers of the same material, crossed the Pont au Change, and darted with a hasty step into the Cité, that labyrinth of obscure, narrow, and winding... more...

PREFACE. I have for several years devoted many of my leisure hours to the study of the language, history, traditions, customs and superstitions of the Dakotas. These Indians are now commonly called the "Sioux"—a name given them by the early French traders and voyageurs. "Dakota" signifies alliance or confederation. Many separate bands, all having a common origin and speaking a common... more...