Fiction Books

Chapter I The editor of that much-abused New York daily, Liberty, pushed back his editorial typewriter and opened one letter in the pile which the office-boy—no respecter of persons—had just laid upon the desk while whistling a piercing tune between his teeth. The letter said: DEAR BEN,—I hate to think what your feelings will be on learning that I am engaged to be married to a daughter of the... more...

THE LONESOME TRAIL PART ONE A man is very much like a horse. Once thoroughly frightened by something he meets on the road, he will invariably shy at the same place afterwards, until a wisely firm master leads him perforce to the spot and proves beyond all doubt that the danger is of his own imagining; after which he will throw up his head and deny that he ever was afraid—and be quite amusingly... more...

THE HOMECOMING OF DIEUDONNÉ LANE "Eejit! My son John! Whip ary man in Jackson County! Whoop! Come along! Who'll fight old Eph Adamson?" The populace of Spring Valley, largely assembled in the shade of the awnings which served as shelter against an ardent June sun, remained cold to the foregoing challenge. It had been repeated more than once by a stout, middle-aged man in shirt sleeves and... more...

CHAPTER I The landlord, the lady, and Mr. Charles Wogan were all three, it seemed, in luck's way that September morning of the year 1719. Wogan was not surprised, his luck for the moment was altogether in, so that even when his horse stumbled and went lame at a desolate part of the road from Florence to Bologna, he had no doubt but that somehow fortune would serve him. His horse stepped gingerly... more...

I. THE DUST IS STIRRED DUST was piled in thick, velvety folds on the weeds and grass of the open Kansas prairie; it lay, a thin veil on the scrawny black horses and the sharp-boned cow picketed near a covered wagon; it showered to the ground in little clouds as Mrs. Wade, a tall, spare woman, moved about a camp-fire, preparing supper in a sizzling skillet, huge iron kettle and blackened coffee-pot. Her... more...

SLIDE. Thus far in the student's development, his mind has dealt chiefly with each subject as a Whole. Now he begins to find a new interest in showing his hearers that the discourse is made up of a series of definite Parts. He takes delight in fixing their attention upon each part in succession. As in crossing a brook on stones, a person poises for a moment, first on one stone, then on another, so... more...

CHAPTER ONE "Ain't it appalling," demanded Sabrina, the Show Girl, "ain't it appalling the way the show game has gone to the morgue this season? "I never seen nothing like it since I been in the business, and while I ain't going to flash no family Bible that's been some time. Why, shows that were making money if they played to thirty-two dollars on the day just... more...

INTRODUCTION THE REDISCOVERY OF THE BIBLE In the early Christian centuries thousands turned to the Bible, as drowning men to a life buoy, because it offered them the only way of escape from the intolerable social and moral ills that attended the death pangs of the old heathenism. Then came the Dark Ages, with their resurgent heathenism and barbarism, when the Bible was taken from the hands of the... more...

PART I. Many hundreds of years ago, when the Plantagenets were kings, England was so covered with woods, that a squirrel was said to be able to hop from tree to tree from the Severn to the Humber. It must have been very different to look at from the country we travel through now; but still there were roads that ran from north to south and from east to west, for the use of those who wished to leave... more...

PREFACE Certain places, said Stevenson, cry out for a story, and Scott, in any new surroundings, straightway invented an appropriate tale, if there were not already a story or tradition in existence. One might even believe that the place itself tells its own tale to the sympathetic imagination. Thus Mr. Bligh Bond in his book, The Gate of Remembrance, implies that the whisperings of the genius loci... more...