Fiction Books

CONCERNING THE PARSON'S CHOICE BETWEEN TOWN AND COUNTRY. One very happy circumstance in a clergyman's lot, is that he is saved from painful perplexity as regards his choice of the scene in which he is to spend his days and years. I am sorry for the man who returns from Australia with a large fortune; and with no further end in life than to settle down somewhere and enjoy it. For in most cases... more...

THE INTRODUCTION The Arabian Nights was introduced to Europe in a French translation by Antoine Galland in 1704, and rapidly attained a unique popularity. There are even accounts of the translator being roused from sleep by bands of young men under his windows in Paris, importuning him to tell them another story. The learned world at first refused to believe that M. Galland had not invented the tales.... more...

TALE VIII. A certain Bornet, less loyal to his wife than she to him,desired to lie with his maidservant, and made his enterpriseknown to a friend, who, hoping to share in the spoil, soaided and abetted him, that whilst the husband thought tolie with his servant he in truth lay with his wife. Unknownto the latter, he then caused his friend to participate inthe pleasure which rightly belonged to himself... more...

FOREWORD It was inevitable that in my efforts to write romantic history of the great West I should at length come to the story of a feud. For long I have steered clear of this rock. But at last I have reached it and must go over it, driven by my desire to chronicle the stirring events of pioneer days. Even to-day it is not possible to travel into the remote corners of the West without seeing the lives... more...

INTRODUCTION Lafcadio Hearn, known to Nippon as Yakumo Koizumi, was born in Leucadia in the Ionian Islands, June 27, 1850. His father was an Irish surgeon in the British Army; his mother was a Greek. Both parents died while Hearn was still a child, and he was adopted by a great-aunt, and educated for the priesthood. To this training he owed his Latin scholarship and, doubtless, something of the... more...

THE LADY OF THE BARGE The master of the barge Arabella sat in the stern of his craft with his right arm leaning on the tiller. A desultory conversation with the mate of a schooner, who was hanging over the side of his craft a few yards off, had come to a conclusion owing to a difference of opinion on the subject of religion. The skipper had argued so warmly that he almost fancied he must have inherited... more...

The Good News According to Luke 1:1 Since many have undertaken to set in order a narrative concerning those matters which have been fulfilled among us, 1:2 even as those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and servants of the word delivered them to us, 1:3 it seemed good to me also, having traced the course of all things accurately from the first, to write to you in order, most excellent... more...

Being the youngest of all his children, I had not the privilege of knowing my father in his best and most joyous years, nor of remembering Greta Hall when the happiness of its circle was unbroken. Much labor and anxiety, and many sorrows, had passed over him; and although his natural buoyancy of spirit had not departed, it was greatly subdued, and I chiefly remember its gradual diminution from year to... more...

CHAPTER I A MONKEY TRICK "I think—" began a tall, slenderly-built lad of sixteen, speaking in a somewhat indolent way; then suddenly he paused to look down through the trees to where the river gleamed below. "What's on your mind now, Rand?" his companion queried, a boy of about the same age, nearly as tall, but more stoutly built, and as light in complexion as the other was dark.... more...

CHAPTER I THE FLASH FROM THE GUNS "I tell you, Bart, I don't like the looks of things," remarked Frank Sheldon to his chum, Bart Raymond, as the two stood on a corner in the German city of Coblenz on the Rhine. "What's on your mind?" inquired Bart, as he drew the collar of his raincoat more snugly around his neck and turned his back to the sleet-laden wind that was fairly... more...