Fiction Books

THE CRIPPLE; OR, EBENEZER THE DISOWNED. It is proverbial to say, with reference to particular constitutions or habits of body, that May is a trying month, and we have known what it is to experience its trials in the sense signified. With our grandmothers too, yea, and with our grandfathers also, May was held to be an unlucky month. Nevertheless, it is a lovely, it is a beautiful month, and the... more...

"MORAL STATISTICIAN."—I don't want any of your statistics; I took your whole batch and lit my pipe with it. I hate your kind of people. You are always ciphering out how much a man's health is injured, and how much his intellect is impaired, and how many pitiful dollars and cents he wastes in the course of ninety-two years' indulgence in the fatal practice of smoking; and in the... more...

OUR FIRST SORROW. "O, it is trouble very bad,Which causes us to weep;All last night long we were so sad,Not one of us could sleep." Sometimes they called us all three just "the boys." But I don't think that was fair. I may have been rather a tomboy, but I wasn't quite so bad as to be called a "boy." I was nine then— I mean I was nine at the beginning of the time I am... more...

CHAPTER I The light cruisers and destroyers—Harwich in war time—The Harwich Force goes out—The first shots of the naval war—Sinking of the Königin Luise—Loss of the Amphion. He who undertakes to write the history of the Naval Forces which had Harwich as their base during the Great War will have a wonderful story indeed to tell—from the sinking, within a few days of the declaration of war,... more...

HOW IT WAS LOST Among green New England hills stood an ancient house, many-gabled, mossy-roofed, and quaintly built, but picturesque and pleasant to the eye; for a brook ran babbling through the orchard that encompassed it about, a garden-plat stretched upward to the whispering birches on the slope, and patriarchal elms stood sentinel upon the lawn, as they had stood almost a century ago, when the... more...

LETTER FROM CHEVALIER BUNSEN. Charlottenberg, near Heidelberg, 10th October, 1857. Dear Sir,—It is now about five months since you expressed to me a wish that I might be induced to imbody, in a few pages, my views on the peculiar interest I attached—as you had been informed by a common friend—to the most popular German novel of the age, Gustav Freytag's Soll und Haben. I confess I was at... more...

HAPPINESS IN PURGATORY. T may be said of Purgatory that if it did not exist it would have to be created, so eminently is it in accord with the dictates of reason and common sense. The natural instinct of travellers at their journey's end is to seek for rest and change of attire. Some are begrimed with mud, others have caught the dust of a scorching summer day; the heat or cold or damp of the... more...

The grey mist of an autumn morning lay upon forest and field. Through its shadowy vapors a swarm of birds were sweeping by, on their Southward way, now dipping low over the tops of the tall fir forest, as if giving a last greeting to their summer homes, and then rising high in the air; turning their flight due South, they disappeared slowly through the fog. At the window of a large manor-house, which... more...

CHAPTER I THE THEORY OF COPERNICUS DROOP The two sisters were together in their garden. Rebecca Wise, turned forty and growing slightly gray at the temples, was moving slowly from one of her precious plants to the next, leaning over each to pinch off a dead leaf or count the buds. It was the historic month of May, 1898, and May is the paradise of flower lovers. Phœbe was eighteen years younger than... more...

THIS IS THE END BY STELLA BENSON 1917 This is the end, for the moment, of all my thinking, this is my unfinal conclusion. There is no reason in tangible things, and no system in the ordinary ways of the world. Hands were made to grope, and feet to stumble, and the only things you may count on are the unaccountable things. System is a fairy and a dream, you never find system where or when you expect it.... more...