Fiction Books

Chapter One WILDERNESS BREAKERS—Mormon Colonization in the West; Pioneers inAgriculture; First Farmers in Many States; The Wilderness Has Been KeptBroken. Chapter Two THE MORMON BATTALION—Soldiers Who Sought No Strife; California Was theGoal; Organization of the Battalion; Cooke Succeeds to the Command; TheMarch Through the Southwest; Capture of the Pueblo of Tucson;Congratulation on Its... more...

CHAPTER I GLORY TRAIL Swing music was blaring from the radio set in the mess when Stan Wilson entered. His blue eyes, which gleamed with a great zest for living, gazed levelly around the room. There was a look in them which had been born of penetrating the blue depths of Colorado canyons and, later on, at the limitless spaces a flier sees. As usual, a half-smile, seemingly directed at himself, played... more...

n no war since the close of the great Napoleonic struggles has the fighting been so obstinate and bloody as in the civil war. Much has been said in song and story of the obstinate courage of the Guards at Inkerman, of the charge of the Light Brigade, and of the terrible fighting and loss of the German at Mars la Tour and Gravelotte. The praise bestowed upon the British and Germans for their valor, and... more...

ALGIERS FROM THE SEA.A fact need not be a fixed fact to be a very positive one; and Kabylia, a region to whose outline no geographer could give precision, has long existed as the most uncomfortable reality in colonial France. Irreconcilable Kabylia, hovering as a sort of thunderous cloudland among the peaks of the Atlas Mountains, is respected for a capacity it has of rolling out storms of desperate... more...

avir gingerly fitted the round opening in the bottom of the silvery globe over the top of his hairless blue skull. He pulled the globe down until he felt tiny filaments touching his scalp. The tips of the wires were cold. The moderator then said, "Dreaming Through the Universe tonight brings you the first native Martian to appear on the dreamwaves—Gavir of the Desert Men. With him is his... more...

Jenny prepares to go a-journeying. “Jenny, my dear maid, thou wilt never fetch white meal out of a sack of sea-coal.” Jenny tossed her head. It would have been a nice little brown head, if it had not been quite so fond of tossing itself. But Jenny was just sixteen, and laboured under a delusion which besets young folks of that age—namely, that half the brains in the world had got into her head,... more...

Lectures on Art. Preliminary Note. Ideas. As the word idea will frequently occur, and will be found also to hold an important relation to our present subject, we shall endeavour, in limine, to possess our readers of the particular sense in which we understand and apply it. An Idea, then, according to our apprehension, is the highest or most perfect form in which any thing, whether of the physical, the... more...

Faustus is therefore a parable of the impotent yearnings of the Middle Ages—its passionate aspiration, its conscience-stricken desire, its fettered curiosity amid the tramping limits of imperfect knowledge and irrational dogmatism. The indestructible beauty of Greek art,—whereof Helen was an emblem, became, through the discovery of classic poetry and sculpture, the possession of the modern world.... more...

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH Captain Mayne Reid was born at Ballyroney, County Down, on the 4th April, 1818, and was the son of the Rev. Thomas Mayne Reid. Mayne Reid was educated with a view to the Church, but finding his inclinations opposed to this calling, he emigrated to America and arrived in New Orleans on January, 1840. After a varied career as plantation over-seer, school-master, and actor, with a... more...

Army of the Cumberland and the Battle of Stone River. The Army of the Ohio, after crowding into the space of six weeks more hard marching and fighting than fell to the lot of any other army in the United States during the summer of 1862, was, on the last of October, encamped in the vicinity of Bowling Green, Kentucky. General Bragg and Kirby Smith, turning Buell’s left flank, had invaded Kentucky,... more...