Fiction Books

CHAPTER I. FIRST EXPERIENCE OF COLONIAL LIFE, 1769-70. Captain Godfrey's health gradually improved after his return to his native country. When he thought himself sufficiently recovered he felt anxious to embark in some branch of business, and not feeling inclined to do so in England, he purchased a grant of land from Lynge Tottenham, Esq., this land was situated on the bank of the River St. John,... more...

CHAPTER I HARD YOUNG HEARTS Behind the Venetian blinds of a respectable middle-class, fifty-pound-a-year, "semi-detached," "family" house, in a respectable middle-class road of the little north-county town of Sidon, midway between the trees of wealth upon the hill, and the business quarters that ended in squalor on the bank of the broad and busy river,--a house boasting a few shabby... more...

Mr Bommaney was a British merchant of the highest rectitude and the most spotless reputation. He traded still under the name of Bommaney, Waite, and Co., though Waite had been long since dead, and the Company had gone out of existence in his father's time. The old offices, cramped and inconvenient, in which the firm had begun life eighty years before, were still good enough for Mr. Bommaney, and... more...

I It is one of Johnny Chipman's parties at the Harlequin Club, and as usual the people the other people have been asked to meet are late and as usual Johnny is looking hesitatingly around at those already collected with the nervous kindliness of an absent-minded menagerie-trainer who is trying to make a happy family out of a wombat, a porcupine, and two small Scotch terriers because they are all... more...

YOUNG SWAIGDERorTHE FORCE OF RUNES It was the young Swaigder,   With the little ball he played;The ball flew into the Damsel’s lap,   And pale her cheeks it made. The ball flew into the Damsel’s bower.   He went of it in quest;Before he out of the bower came,   Much care had filled his breast! “The ball, the ball thou shouldst not fling,   Shouldst cast it not at me;There sits a maid in... more...

Father and I “Argue the Point.” “Hullo, father!” I sang out, when we had got a little way out from the pontoon and opened the mouth of the harbour, noticing, as I looked over my shoulder to see how we were steering, a string of flags being run up aboard the old Saint Vincent. “They’re signalling away like mad this morning all over the shop! First, atop of the dockyard semaphore; and then... more...

CHAPTER I WHEREIN JONATHAN REUBEN WIX BEGINS TO THINK “ A natural again!” exulted Jonathan Reuben Wix, as the dice bounded from his plump hand and came to rest upon the billiard-table in Leiniger’s Select Café, with a five and a deuce showing. “Somebody ring the bell for me, because I’m a-going to get off.” He was a large young man in every dimension, broad of chest and big and pink of... more...

CHAPTER I. THE ARRIVAL AT BIG BONANZA.It was just about five o'clock in the afternoon of a cool day in autumn when Young Wild West and his friends rode into a little mining camp called Big Bonanza, which was situated in the heart of the range, known as the Silver Bend Mountains, Nevada. It was the first signs of anything like civilization that the party had seen in two days, and though there were... more...

1. ORIENTAL PAINTING Any bunch of roses or flowers, or anything of the kind that you admire, take the pattern of by placing them against a light of window glass, then lay a piece of white paper over them, and through the latter you will see the roses, &c. Now with a lead pencil take the pattern of the roses, &c., on the paper; when you have them all marked, cut then out with a scissors, so that... more...

Unnamed world, 2559 CE Joste was waiting in front of his desk when two guards brought the just-captured human into his office. He found it hard to look at the man without becoming physically ill, and wondered briefly how the guards could tolerate touching him. Well, that was their job; his was to question the man, and he found himself hoping the foul thing would resist, give him an excuse to use force.... more...