Fiction Books

THE RUSH IN 1900 he remarkable discoveries of gold at Cape Nome, Alaska, situated almost in the Bering Strait, only one hundred and fifty miles from Siberia, and distant not less than three thousand miles from San Francisco and fifteen hundred from the famed Klondike, naturally created more excitement in the Western and mining sections of this country than in the Middle States and the "effete... more...

The Welsh style themselves Cymry or Cumry, a word which, in their language, means a number of people associated together.   They were the second mass of population which moved from Asia into Europe.  They followed and pushed forward the Gael or Gauls; were themselves impelled onward by the Slowaks or Sclavonians, who were themselves hunted, goaded, and pestered by a wild, waspish race of people,... more...

LOVES USURIES. Love's Usuries. "The star of love is a flower—a deathless token,That grows beside the gate of unseen things." Among friends, parting for a lengthy spell has its disadvantages. They age in character and physique, and after the reconnoitre there is a pathetic consciousness of the grudging confessions which time has inscribed on the monumental palimpsest. My meeting with... more...

CHAPTER I The author dies, meets with Mercury, and is by him conductedto the stage which sets out for the other world. On the first day of December 1741 I departed this life at my lodgings in Cheapside. My body had been some time dead before I was at liberty to quit it, lest it should by any accident return to life: this is an injunction imposed on all souls by the eternal law of fate, to prevent the... more...

EARTH SHIELD AND EARTH FESTIVAL A mighty table-land lies southward in a hardy region of our country. It has the form of a colossal Shield, lacking and broken in some of its outlines and rough and rude of make. Nature forged it for some crisis in her long warfare of time and change, made use of it, and so left it lying as one of her ancient battle-pieces—Kentucky. The great Shield is raised high out... more...

The Latest Viewpoints of Men Worth While An Old Business Man Testifies to the Progress the World Has Made Since Seventy Years Ago—Lewis Carroll's Advice on Mental Nutrition—Rudyard Kipling Defines What Literature Is—Richard Mansfield Holds That All Men Are Actors—Professor Thomas Advances Reasons for Spelling-Reform—Helen Keller Pictures the Tragedy of Blindness—With Other Expressions... more...

INTRODUCTION. I. The following Dog Stories are taken from the pages of the Spectator, with the permission of the editors and proprietors. It was suggested to me by Mr. Fisher Unwin that the many strange and pleasant stories of dogs which from time to time are sent to the Spectator by its correspondents would, if put together, form a volume of no little entertainment for all who love dogs, or are... more...

ARGUMENT OF THE POEM. From the moment of my earliest acquaintance with Colonial History, I have felt all the pressure of a task laid upon me, tightening its grasp as I reached maturer years; that of an attempt to rescue the Aztecs from their letterless and mythical position in history, to the position which their possibilities at least argue for them; and this feeling has been far less the outgrowth of... more...

CHAPTER I Whoever sets himself to base his political thinking on a re-examination of the working of human nature, must begin by trying to overcome his own tendency to exaggerate the intellectuality of mankind. We are apt to assume that every human action is the result of an intellectual process, by which a man first thinks of some end which he desires, and then calculates the means by which that end... more...

THE MIRACULOUS REVENGE I arrived in Dublin on the evening of the fifth of August, and drove to the residence of my uncle, the Cardinal Archbishop. He is like most of my family, deficient in feeling, and consequently averse to me personally. He lives in a dingy house, with a side-long view of the portico of his cathedral from the front windows, and of a monster national school from the back. My uncle... more...