Fiction Books

D'RI AND I I A poet may be a good companion, but, so far as I know, he is ever the worst of fathers. Even as grandfather he is too near, for one poet can lay a streak of poverty over three generations. Doubt not I know whereof I speak, dear reader, for my mother's father was a poet—a French poet, too, whose lines had crossed the Atlantic long before that summer of 1770 when he came to... more...

The following Glossary includes the whole of Somerset, East of the River Parret, as well as adjoining parts of Wiltshire and Gloucestershire. West of the Parret many of the words are pronounced very differently indeed, so as to mark strongly the people who use them. [This may be seen more fully developed in two papers, by T. Spencer Baynes, read before the Somersetshire Archaeological Society, entitled... more...

THE DITCH THE BOYan American soldierTHE BOY'S DREAM OF HIS MOTHERANGÉLIQUEFrench childrenJEAN-BAPTISTEFrench childrenTHE TEACHERTHE ONE SCHOOLGIRL WITH IMAGINATIONTHE THREE SCHOOLGIRLS WITHOUT IMAGINATIONHESHETHE AMERICAN GENERALTHE ENGLISH STATESMAN The Time.—A summer day in 1918 and a summer day in 2018[pg 003]FIRST ACT The time is a summer day in 1918. The scene is the first-line trench of... more...

The Wrecker Sometimes the notion comes to me while I'm talkin' to people that maybe I don't make myself clear, and it's been so for some time now—the things I see in my mind fadin' away from me at times, like ships in a fog. And that's strange enough, too, if what people tell me so often is true—that it used to be so one time that the office clerks would correct their... more...

CHAPTER I FAMILY ANTECEDENTS The Mallocks of Cockington—Some Old Devonshire Houses—A Child's Outlook on Life "Memoirs" is a word which, as commonly used, includes books of very various kinds, ranging from St. Augustine's Confessions to the gossip of Lady Dorothy Nevill. Such books, however, have all one family likeness. They all of them represent life as seen by the writers from a... more...

No windows broke any of the four plain walls of the office; there was no focus of outer-world sunlight on the desk there. Yet the five disks set out on its surface appeared to glow—perhaps the heat of the mischief they could cause ... had caused ... blazed in them. But fanciful imaginings did not cushion or veil cold, hard fact. Dr. Gordon Ashe, one of the four men peering unhappily at the display,... more...

CHAPTER I 'Ayah,' the doctor-sahib said in the vernacular, standing beside the bed, 'the fever of the mistress is like fire. Without doubt it cannot go on thus, but all that is in your hand to do you have done. It is necessary now only to be very watchful. And it will be to dress the mistress, and to make everything ready for a journey. Two hours later all the sahib-folk go from this... more...

CHAPTER I. AS THE SPIRIT MOVED The village lay in a valley which had been the bed of a great river in the far-off days when Ireland, Wales and Brittany were joined together and the Thames flowed into the Seine. The place had never known turmoil or stir. For generations it had lived serenely. Three buildings in the village stood out insistently, more by the authority of their appearance and position... more...

CHAPTER I Lady Tozer adjusted her gold-rimmed eye-glasses with an air of dignified aggressiveness. She had lived too many years in the Far East. In Hong Kong she was known as the "Mandarin." Her powers of merciless inquisition suggested torments long drawn out. The commander of the Sirdar, homeward bound from Shanghai, knew that he was about to be stretched on the rack when he took his seat at... more...

CHAPTER ONE SYMPATHY "I come down on the subway with Max Linkheimer this morning, Mawruss," Abe Potash said to his partner, Morris Perlmutter, as they sat in the showroom one hot July morning. "That feller is a regular philantropist." "I bet yer," Morris replied. "He would talk a tin ear on to you if you only give him a chance. Leon Sammet too, Abe, I assure you. I seen Leon... more...