Fiction Books

I MANTUA DIVES AVIS Among biographical commonplaces one frequently finds the generalization that it is the provincial who acquires the perspective requisite for a true estimate of a nation, and that it is the country-boy reared in lonely communion with himself who attains the deepest knowledge of human nature. If there be some degree of truth in this reflection, Publius Vergilius Maro, the... more...

CHAPTER 1 Rome had passed the summits and stood looking into the dark valley of fourteen hundred years. Behind her the graves of Caesar and Sallust and Cicero and Catullus and Vergil and Horace; before her centuries of madness and treading down; round about her a multitude sickening of luxury, their houses filled with spoil, their mouths with folly, their souls with discontent; above her only mystery... more...

CHAPTER I. RACHEL FROST. The slanting rays of the afternoon sun, drawing towards the horizon, fell on a fair scene of country life; flickering through the young foliage of the oak and lime trees, touching the budding hedges, resting on the growing grass, all so lovely in their early green, and lighting up with flashes of yellow fire the windows of the fine mansion, that, rising on a gentle eminence,... more...

PART I Lays of fair dames of lofty birth,  And golden hair alt richly curled;Of knights that venture life for love,  Suit poets of the older world.We wilt not fill our simple rhymes,  With diamond flash, or gleaming pearl;In singing of the by-gone times;We simply sing the love and faith,Outliving absence, strong as death,Of one Jow-born Canadian girl. 'Twas long ago the rapid spring  Had... more...

THE MEETIN' Now is it to be rain or a storm of wind at the Basin? I love that foam out on the sea; those boulders, black and wet along the shore, they are a rest to me; the clouds chase one another; in this dim north country the wind is cool and strong, though it is now midsummer; at sunset you shall see such color! From a little, low, storm-beaten building comes the sound of a fog-horn. That is... more...

PREFACE There is an old story of a punctiliously polite Greek, who, while performing the funeral of an infant daughter, felt bound to make his excuses to the spectators for "bringing out such a ridiculously small corpse to so large a crowd." The Author, although he trusts that the present production has more vitality than the Greek gentleman's child, still feels that in these days of... more...

CHAPTER I VICKY VAN Victoria Van Allen was the name she signed to her letters and to her cheques, but Vicky Van, as her friends called her, was signed all over her captivating personality, from the top of her dainty, tossing head to the tips of her dainty, dancing feet. I liked her from the first, and if her "small and earlies" were said to be so called because they were timed by the small and... more...

VICTOR READS THE FATEFUL STAR Saturday had been a strenuous day for the baseball team of Winona University, and Victor Ollnee, its redoubtable catcher, slept late. Breakfast at the Beta Kappa Fraternity House on Sunday started without him, and Gilbert Frenson, who never played ball or tennis, and Arnold Macey, who was too effeminate to swing a bat, divided the Sunday morning Star between them. "See... more...

Victor Roy Victor's Soliloquy. Heavily rolleth the wintry clouds,  And the ceaseless snow is falling, falling,As the frost king's troops in their icy shrouds,  Whistle and howl, like lost spirits calling. But a warm luxuriantly furnished room,  Is an antidote to the wild night storm,Lamplight and firelight banish the gloom,  No poverty stalks there with cold gaunt form. Yet there... more...

SAMSON AND DELILAH.Thus he grewTolerant of what he half disdained. And she,Perceiving that she was but half disdained,Began to break her arts with graver fits—Turn red or pale, and often, when they met,Sigh deeply, or, all-silent, gaze upon himWith such a fixed devotion, that the old man,Though doubtful, felt the flattery, and at timesWould flatter his own wish, in age, for love,And half believe her... more...