Fiction Books

Madam Fulton and her granddaughter Electra were sitting at the breakfast-table. It was a warm yet inspiriting day in early spring, and, if the feel and look of it were not enough, the garden under the dining-room windows told the season's hour like a floral clock. The earliest blossoms had been pushed onward by the mounting spirit of the year, and now the firstlings of May were budding. The great... more...

CHAPTER I. LE CHEF FALLS IN LOVE WITH THE HALF-BREED MAIDEN. The sun was hanging low in the clear blue over the prairie, as two riders hurried their ponies along a blind trail toward a distant range of purple hills that lay like sleepy watchers along the banks of the Red River. The beasts must have ridden far, for their flanks were white with foam, and their riders were splashed with froth and mud,... more...

The Outcast. A furious gust of wind tore down the chimney, blowing the smoke out into the small but cosily-furnished sitting-room of the little cottage at Kingston-on-Thames, and sending a shower of sparks hissing and spluttering on to the hearth-rug, where they were promptly trodden out by a tall, fair-haired young giant, who lazily removed his feet from a chair on which they reposed, for the purpose.... more...

The county of H——— was an old Colonial county, and even as late as the time of my story contained many Colonial relics. Among them were the court-house and the jail, and, at that time, the Judge and the Sheriff. The court-house was an old brick edifice of solemn and grayish brown, with a portico whose mighty columns might have stood before a temple of Minerva overlooking the Ægean Sea. With its... more...

CHAPTER I SYMPATHY AND SELFISHNESS The girl who was dying lay in an invalid chair piled up with cushions in a sheltered corner of the lawn. The woman who had come to visit her had deliberately turned away her head with a murmured word about the sunshine and the field of buttercups. Behind them was the little sanitarium, a gray stone villa built in the style of a château, overgrown with creepers, and... more...

CHAPTER I. It is my purpose to set down what I saw during such time as Simon Kenton gave me my first lessons in woodcraft and it is well to make the statement in advance in order that others may be deprived of the opportunity of saying what would sound disagreeable:—that the pupil was for a time so dull that one less patient and painstaking than Kenton would have brought the lessons to a speedy... more...

CHAPTER I. SPILLED OUT. Sylvie Argenter was driving about in her mother's little basket-phæton. There was a story about this little basket-phæton, a story, and a bit of domestic diplomacy. The story would branch away, back and forward; which I cannot, right here in this first page, let it do. It would tell—taking the little carriage for a text and key—ever so much about aims and ways and... more...

BOOK I FAIR WEATHER AT KINGSBOROUGH I The last day of Circuit Court was over at Kingsborough. The jury had vanished from the semicircle of straight-backed chairs in the old court-house, the clerk had laid aside his pen along with his air of listless attention, and the judge was making his way through the straggling spectators to the sunken stone steps of the platform outside. As the crowd in the... more...

The Story of the Boy Who Sang in the Streets This is the house in which JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH was born. THE HOUSE IN WHICH BACH WAS BORN.This house stands in the town of Eisenach in Germany. It looks very much the same today as it did when Sebastian was a little boy. Many people go there to visit this house because the little boy grew to be a famous man. In Eisenach there is a statue of Bach near the... more...

CHAPTER I It was a case of declarin' time out on the house. Uh-huh—a whole afternoon. What's the use bein' a private sec. in good standin' unless you can put one over on the time-clock now and then? Besides, I had a social date; and, now Mr. Robert is back on the job so steady and is gettin' so domestic in his habits, somebody's got to represent the Corrugated Trust at... more...