Fiction Books

CHAPTER I. THE BRIG-SCHOONER "PILGRIM." On February 2, 1876, the schooner "Pilgrim" was in latitude 43° 57' south, and in longitude 165° 19' west of the meridian of Greenwich. This vessel, of four hundred tons, fitted out at San Francisco for whale-fishing in the southern seas, belonged to James W. Weldon, a rich Californian ship-owner, who had for several years intrusted... more...

Perhaps this story does not belong with my other tales of the Special Patrol Service. And yet, there is, or should be, a report somewhere in the musty archives of the Service, covering the incident. Not accurately, and not in detail. Among a great mass of old records which I was browsing through the other day, I happened across that report; it occupied exactly three lines in the log-book of the Ertak:... more...

THE CHILD-WORLD A Child-World, yet a wondrous world no less,To those who knew its boundless happiness.A simple old frame house—eight rooms in all—Set just one side the center of a smallBut very hopeful Indiana town,—The upper-story looking squarely downUpon the main street, and the main highwayFrom East to West,—historic in its day,Known as The National Road—old-timers, allWho linger yet,... more...

CHAPTER I. WHAT'S IN HEREDITY Honora Leffingwell is the original name of our heroine. She was born in the last quarter of the Nineteenth Century, at Nice, in France, and she spent the early years of her life in St. Louis, a somewhat conservative old city on the banks of the Mississippi River. Her father was Randolph Leffingwell, and he died in the early flower of his manhood, while filling with a... more...

A small, shiny, pink card lay on the round table in Sylvia Bailey's sitting-room at the Hôtel de l'Horloge in Paris. She had become quite accustomed to finding one or more cards—cards from dressmakers, cards from corset-makers, cards from hairdressers—lying on her sitting-room table, but there had never been a card quite like this card. Although it was pink, it looked more like a... 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...

Having put on our clothes, in the meantime, we commenced to stroll around and soon, the better to amuse ourselves, approached the circle of players; all of a sudden we caught sight of a bald-headed old fellow, rigged out in a russet colored tunic, playing ball with some long haired boys. It was not so much the boys who attracted our attention, although they might well have merited it, as it was the... more...

THE BIG SNOW. "We're going to have snow to-night!" Ted Strong, leader of the broncho boys, was sitting on the back of Sultan, his noble little black stallion, on the ridge of a prairie swell, looking at a lowering sky. Out of the northwest a chilling wind, damp and raw, was sweeping dull-gray clouds before it. Ted had addressed his remark to Bud Morgan, his chum and able lieutenant, who... more...

I In the living-room of The Dreamerie, his home on Tyee Head, Hector McKaye, owner of the Tyee Lumber Company and familiarly known as "The Laird," was wont to sit in his hours of leisure, smoking and building castles in Spain—for his son Donald. Here he planned the acquisition of more timber and the installation of an electric-light plant to furnish light, heat, and power to his own town of... more...

THERE'S TROUBLE ON THE SEA The ice in the big bay had broken up suddenly that year in the latter part of March before a tremendous ocean swell heaving in beneath it. The piles of firewood and the loads of timber for the summer fishing-rooms on all the outer islands were left standing on the landwash. The dog-teams usually haul all this out at a stretch gallop over the glare ice which overlies in... more...