Fiction Books

CHAPTER I THE HAWTHORNES AND THE PEABODYS To my lot have fallen sundry letters of my mother's, received in youth by her sisters and friends, and by her husband and others in later life. I have often read over these magic little pictures of old days, and each time have felt less inclined to let them remain silently in the family. The letters are full of sunshine, which is not even yet in the least... more...

INTRODUCTION The writer on Colonial Affairs is naturally, to some extent, discouraged by the knowledge that the subject is an unattractive one to a large proportion of the reading public. It is difficult to get up anything beyond a transient interest in the affairs of our Colonial dependencies; indeed, I believe that the mind of the British public was more profoundly moved by the exodus of Jumbo, than... more...

CHAPTER I. EXPLORING EXPEDITIONS. As early as a hundred and thirty-five years ago, shortly after England had acquired the Canadas, Captain Jonathan Carver, who had been an officer in the British provincial army, conceived the idea of fitting out an expedition to cross the continent between the forty-third and forty-sixth degrees of north latitude. His intention was to measure the breadth of North... more...

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...

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...

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...

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...

CHAPTER I. THE STERILE PROSPECT AND THE LONELY TRAVELLER. Our scene lies in the upper part of the state of Georgia, a region at this time fruitful of dispute, as being within the Cherokee territories. The route to which we now address our attention, lies at nearly equal distances between the main trunk of the Chatahoochie and that branch of it which bears the name of the Chestatee, after a once... more...