Fiction Books

CHAPTER I. THE NIGHT OF THE BEACONS. It is strange to me, Jock Calder of West Inch, to feel that though now, in the very centre of the nineteenth century, I am but five-and-fifty years of age, and though it is only once in a week perhaps that my wife can pluck out a little grey bristle from over my ear, yet I have lived in a time when the thoughts and the ways of men were as different as though it were... more...

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I begin a life without a similitude with a simile—Start off with four horses—And, finally, I make my first appearance on any stage, under the protection of the “Crown.” In the volume I am going to write, it is my intention to adhere rigidly to the truth—this will be bonâ fide an autobiography—and, as the public like novelty, an autobiography without an iota of fiction in the whole of it,... more...

PREFACE. This volume is an historical fiction, but the plan of it was suggested by biography, and is made to include the most interesting and picturesque episodes in the home side of the life of Benjamin Franklin, so as to form a connected narrative or picture of his public life. I have written no book with a deeper sympathy with my subject, for, although fiction, the story very truthfully shows that... more...

THE OLD HOMESTEAD The late afternoon sun shone full upon a boy who was perched on the top of an old rail fence forming the dividing line between the farm that spread out before him and the one over which he had just passed. It was early March. The keen wind as it whirled past him, whipping the branches of the tree together and carrying away clouds of dried leaves from behind the fence rows, penetrated... more...

CHAPTER I SCHOOL REOPENS "And of course," drawled Laura Polk, she of the irrepressible spirits and what Mrs. Cupp called "flamboyant" hair, "she will come riding up to the Hall on her trusty pinto pony (whatever kind of pony that is), with a gun at her belt and swinging a lariat. She will yell for Dr. Beulah to come forth, and the minute the darling appears this Rude Rhoda from the... more...

NEVILLE'S BIRTHDAY 1 Neville, at five o'clock (Nature's time, not man's) on the morning of her birthday, woke from the dream-broken sleep of summer dawns, hot with the burden of two sheets and a blanket, roused by the multitudinous silver calling of a world full of birds. They chattered and bickered about the creepered house, shrill and sweet, like a hundred brooks running together... more...

One of the most distinctive phyletic lines among the diverse Neotropical hylid frogs is composed of a group of 40 species placed in the genus Phyllomedusa (Funkhouser, 1957) or in two or three different genera (Goin, 1961; Lutz, 1966). These species differ from all other Neotropical hylids by possessing a vertical, instead of horizontal, pupil. The only other hylids having a vertical pupil belong to... more...

INTRODUCTION. The conte is a form of fiction in which the French have always delighted and in which they have always excelled, from the days of the jongleurs and the trouvères, past the periods of La Fontaine and Voltaire, down to the present. The conte is a tale, something more than a sketch, it may be, and something less than a short story. In verse it is at times but a mere rhymed anecdote, or it... more...

The Second Book of Kings 1:1 Moab rebelled against Israel after the death of Ahab. 1:2 Ahaziah fell down through the lattice in his upper chamber that was in Samaria, and was sick: and he sent messengers, and said to them, Go, inquire of Baal Zebub, the god of Ekron, whether I shall recover of this sickness. 1:3 But the angel of Yahweh said to Elijah the Tishbite, Arise, go up to meet the messengers of... more...