Fiction Books

INTRODUCTION These disjointed thoughts about one of Leonard Merrick's most articulate books must begin with a personal confession. For many years I walked about this earth avoiding the works of Leonard Merrick, as other men might have avoided an onion. This insane aversion was created in my mind chiefly by admirers of what is called the "cheerful" note in fiction. Such people are... more...

INTRODUCTION The story of the West Indies and Spanish Main is one to stir the hearts of many nations. The shores of the Caribbean Sea have been the scene of marvellous adventures, of intense struggles between races and peoples, of pain, trouble, and disaster of almost every description. No wonder that the romance writer has laid his scenes upon its beautiful islands and deep blue waters, for nowhere in... more...

"REMEMBER ME." "Remember me!" How swift the tide   Of memory glideth o'er the past;Those sunny hours so quickly sped,   Perchance a few with clouds o'ercast.But memory hath more lasting flowers,   Which Time's rude hand can ne'er efface,The sweets we cull from friendship's bowers,   The gems affection's altar grace. "Remember me!" In... more...

I have told my wife quite plainly that in my opinion I am as little fitted by nature for the task she has laid upon my shoulders as any man alive. I have spent a great part of my life in action; and though the later part of it has been quieter and more peaceful than the earlier, and though I have enjoyed opportunities of study which I never had before, I am still anything but a bookish man, and I am... more...

MY DEAR MISS DOANE: You will permit me to address you with this semblance of familiarity, I trust, for the frankness of our conversation in my office gives me some right to claim you as an acquaintance. And first of all let me tell you that we shall be glad to print your review of The Kentons, and shall be pleased to send you a long succession of novels for analysis if you can always use the scalpel... more...

I If the author of this meandering record has noted elsewhere that an event occurring early in 1870 was to mark the end of his youth, he is moved here at once to qualify in one or two respects that emphasis. Everything depends in such a view on what one means by one's youth—so shifting a consciousness is this, and so related at the same time to many different matters. We are never old, that is... more...

CHAPTER I. HELEN LINGARD. A swift, gray November wind had taken every chimney of the house for an organ-pipe, and was roaring in them all at once, quelling the more distant and varied noises of the woods, which moaned and surged like a sea. Helen Lingard had not been out all day. The morning, indeed, had been fine, but she had been writing a long letter to her brother Leopold at Cambridge, and had put... more...

Two king-sized bands blared martial music, the "Internationale" and the "Star-Spangled Banner," each seemingly trying to drown the other in a Götterdämmerung of acoustics. Two lines of troops, surfacely differing in uniforms and in weapons, but basically so very the same, so evenly matched, came to attention. A thousand hands slapped a thousand submachine gun stocks. Marshal Vladimir... more...

CHAPTER IOVERTURE BY THE BIRDS"We would have you to wit, that on eggs though we sit,And are spiked on the spit, and are baked in a pan;Birds are older by far than your ancestors are,And made love and made war, ere the making of man!" (Andrew Lang.) A party of Swallows perched on the telegraph wires beside the highway where it passed Orchard Farm. They were resting after a breakfast of insects,... more...

The late war with Spain marks a momentous epoch in the progress of our country, whose history, stretching through the centuries of discovery, exploration, settlement, the struggle for independence, foreign and domestic war, lofty achievement in all departments of knowledge and progress, is the most interesting in human annals. It is a record full of instruction and incitement to endeavor, which must... more...