Fiction Books

PREFACE A single purpose runs throughout this little book, though different aspects of it are treated in the three several parts. The first part, "The Mystery of Evil," written soon after "The Idea of God," was designed to supply some considerations which for the sake of conciseness had been omitted from that book. Its close kinship with the second part, "The Cosmic Roots of Love... more...

To cast on.—The first interlacement of the cotton on the needle. To cast off.—To knit two stitches, and to pass the first over the second, and so on to the last stitch, which is to be secured by drawing the thread through. To cast over.—To bring the cotton forward round the needle. To narrow.—To lessen, by knitting two stitches together. To seam.—To knit a stitch with the cotton before the... more...

Chapter I Her Earlier Memories If old Jeremy Clapp had not sneezed his teeth into the fire that winter day this story might have had a more seemly beginning; but, being a true record, it must start with that sneeze, because it was the first happening in Georgina Huntingdon's life which she could remember distinctly. She was in her high-chair by a window overlooking a gray sea, and with a bib under... more...

Paul Morphy's father, Judge Morphy, of the Supreme Court of Louisiana, beguiled his leisure hours with the fascinations of Chess, and, finding a precocious aptitude for the game in his son, he taught him the moves and the value of the various pieces. In the language of somebody,—"To teach the young Paul chess,His leisure he'd employ;Until, at last, the old manWas beaten by the boy."... more...

CHAPTER I OUTSIDE the subtle clarion of autumn's dying glory flamed in the torches of the maples and smoldered in the burgundy of the oaks. It trailed a veil of rose-ash and mystery along the slopes of the White Mountains, and inside the crumbling school-house the children droned sleepily over their books like prisoners in a lethargic mutiny. Frost had brought the chestnuts rattling down in the... more...

A TRADITION OF THE TRIBE OF THE DOG-RIBS. Upon a narrow strait, between two tempestuous and stormy seas, lived the young man Chappewee, whose father, the old man Chappewee, was the first of men. The old man Chappewee, the first of men, when he first landed on the earth, near where the present Dog-ribs have their hunting-grounds, found the world a beautiful world, well stocked with food, and abounding... more...

When Ainsley first moved to Lone Lake Farm all of his friends asked him the same question. They wanted to know, if the farmer who sold it to him had abandoned it as worthless, how one of the idle rich, who could not distinguish a plough from a harrow, hoped to make it pay? His answer was that he had not purchased the farm as a means of getting richer by honest toil, but as a retreat from the world and... more...

Preface Irish Fairy Lore has well been called by Mr. Alfred Nutt, one of the leading authorities on the subject, “As fair and bounteous a harvest of myth and romance as ever flourished among any race,” and Dr. Joyce, the well-known Irish scholar and historian, states: “that it is very probable that the belief in the existence of fairies came in with the earliest colonists that entered Ireland,... more...

CHAPTER I. BILLY BYRNE BILLY BYRNE was a product of the streets and alleys of Chicago's great West Side. From Halsted to Robey, and from Grand Avenue to Lake Street there was scarce a bartender whom Billy knew not by his first name. And, in proportion to their number which was considerably less, he knew the patrolmen and plain clothes men equally as well, but not so pleasantly. His kindergarten... more...

CHAPTER I. "SECURITY" On December 1, 1851, Charras[1] shrugged his shoulder and unloaded his pistols. In truth, the belief in the possibility of a coup d'etat had become humiliating. The supposition of such illegal violence on the part of M. Louis Bonaparte vanished upon serious consideration. The great question of the day was manifestly the Devincq election; it was clear that the... more...