Fiction Books

Chapter I. How I Came to know Clare Skymer. It was a day when everything around seemed almost perfect: everything does, now and then, come nearly right for a moment or two, preparatory to coming all right for good at the last. It was the third week in June. The great furnace was glowing and shining in full force, driving the ship of our life at her best speed through the ocean of space. For on deck,... more...

CHAPTER I SIGHTING THE SHOOTING STAR "Green light off the starboard bow, sir." The voice came from the black void far above the navigating bridge of the battleship "Long Island." "Where away?" demanded the watch officer on the bridge. "Two points off starboard bow, sir." "What do you make her out?" "Don't make her out, sir," answered the red-haired... more...

CHAPTER I. Hôtel des Princes, Paris. It is a strange thing to begin a "Log" when the voyage is nigh ended! A voyage without chart or compass has it been: and now is land in sight—the land of the weary and heart-tired! Here am I, at the Hôtel des Princes, en route for Italy, whither my doctors have sentenced me! What a sad record would be preserved to the world if travellers were but to fill... more...

CHAPTER I. I AM A SUBJECT OF CONTENTION One midnight of a winter month the sleepers in Riversley Grange were awakened by a ringing of the outer bell and blows upon the great hall-doors. Squire Beltham was master there: the other members of the household were, his daughter Dorothy Beltham; a married daughter Mrs. Richmond; Benjamin Sewis, an old half-caste butler; various domestic servants; and a little... more...

A Treatise Of Daunses, wherin it is shewed, that they are as it were accessories and dependants (or thynges annexed) to whoredome: where also by the way is touched and proued, that Playes are ioyned and knit togeather in a rancke or rowe with them. I. Thessal. 5. Let eurie one possesse his vessel in holines and honor. Anno 1581. A Treatise of Daunses, in which is shewed, that daunses bee intisementes... more...

A High Family. “Con-found those organs!” said the Earl of Barmouth. “And frustrate their grinders,” cried Viscount Diphoos. “They are such a nuisance, my boy.” “True, oh sire,” replied the viscount, who had the heels of his patent leather shoes on the library chimney-piece of the town mansion in Portland Place. He had reached that spot with difficulty, and was smoking a cigar, to calm... more...

FLORE (1643) It was about a month after my marriage—and third clerk to the most noble the Bishop of Beauvais, and even admitted on occasions to write in his presence and prepare his minutes, who should marry if I might not?—it was about a month after my marriage, I say, that the thunderbolt, to which I have referred, fell and shattered my fortunes. I rose one morning—they were firing guns for the... more...

CHAPTER I TELLING HOW, UNDER STRESS OF CIRCUMSTANCE, A HUMANIST TURNED HERMIT A peculiar magic resides in running water, as every student of earth-lore knows. There is high magic, too, in the marriage of rivers, so that the spot where two mingle their streams is sacred, endowed with strange properties of evocation and of purification. Such spots go to the making of history and ruling of individual... more...

CHAPTER I. THE CROWLEY FAMILY. Let me introduce the reader to the Crowley family, and when you have become acquainted with them bear well in mind that in this broad land of ours there are thousands upon thousands of families in a condition as deplorable, and some whose mercury line of debauchery has dropped to a point of miserable existence as yet unsounded by this family. The Crowleys are all in... more...

THE PATTERN NATION.   It seems to be the destiny of France to work out all sorts of problems in state and social policy. It may be said to volunteer experiments in government for the benefit of mankind. All kinds of forms it tries, one after the other: each, in turn, is supposed to be the right thing; and when found to be wrong, an effort, fair or unfair, is made to try something else. It would surely... more...