Fiction Books

CHAPTER I AT VICTORIA STATION The allied forces, English and French, had been bent backward day by day, until it seemed as if Paris was fairly within the Germans' grasp. Bent indeed, but never broken, and with the turning of the tide the Allied line had rushed forward, and France breathed again. Two men, seated in a room of the United Service Club in London one gloomy afternoon in November, 1914,... more...

CHAPTER I. It was a bright day in the early spring of 1869. All Paris seemed to have turned out to enjoy itself. The Tuileries, the Champs Elysees, the Bois de Boulogne, swarmed with idlers. A stranger might have wondered where Toil was at work, and in what nook Poverty lurked concealed. A millionaire from the London Exchange, as he looked round on the magasins, the equipages, the dresses of the women;... more...

ACT I.   SCENE I.——ÉRASTE, A LADY SINGER, TWO MEN SINGERS, several others performing on instruments, DANCERS. Era. (to the Musicians and Dancers). Carry out the orders I have given you for the serenade. As for myself, I will withdraw, for I do not wish to be seen here.  LADY (sings).Spread, charming night, spread over every browThe subtle scent of thy narcotic flower,And let no wakeful hearts... more...

"The black-eyed Judith, fair and tall,Attracted the heir of Riccon Hall.For years and years was Judith known,Queen of a wild world all her own;By Wooler Haugh, by silver Till,By Coldstream Bridge, and Flodden Hill:Until, at length, one morn, when sleetHung frozen round the traveller's feet,By a grey ruin on Tweedside,The creature laid her down and died."—Border Ballad. More than three... more...

THE CLERK OF THE GOLDEN EAGLE Sibley Junction is in the sub-tropic zone of Colorado. It lies in a hot, dry, but immensely productive valley at an altitude of some four thousand feet above the sea, a village laced with irrigating ditches, shaded by big cotton-wood-trees, and beat upon by a genial, generous-minded sun. The boarders at the Golden Eagle Hotel can sit on the front stoop and see the... more...

I THE BEGINNINGS OF A PLAINSMAN There came a time in the law of lifeWhen over the nursing sodThe shadows broke, and the soul awokeIn a strange, dim dream of God.--LANGDON SMITH. It might have been but yesterday that I saw it all: the glinting sunlight on the yellow Missouri boiling endlessly along at the foot of the bluff; the flood-washed sands across the river; the tangle of tall, coarse weeds... more...

Jim's father died at Gettysburg; up against the Stone Fence; went to heaven in a chariot of fire on that fateful day when the issue between the two parts of the country was decided: when the slaughter on the Confe'd-erate side was such that after the battle a lieutenant was in charge of a regiment, and a major commanded a brigade. This fact was much to Jim, though no one knew it: it tempered... more...

CHAPTER I. Of Thorstein Egilson and his Kin. There was a man called Thorstein, the son of Egil, the son of Skallagrim, the son of Kveldulf the Hersir of Norway. Asgerd was the mother of Thorstein; she was the daughter of Biorn Hold. Thorstein dwelt at Burg in Burg-firth; he was rich of fee, and a great chief, a wise man, meek and of measure in all wise. He was nought of such wondrous growth and... more...

CHAPTER I. A FAMILY PARTY It was on a dark and starless night in February, 181—, as the last carriage of a dinner-party had driven from the door of a large house in St. James's-square, when a party drew closer around the drawing-room fire, apparently bent upon that easy and familiar chit-chat the presence of company interdicts. One of these was a large and fine-looking man of about... more...

SATURDAY.—I am almost a whole day old, now. I arrived yesterday. That is as it seems to me. And it must be so, for if there was a day-before-yesterday I was not there when it happened, or I should remember it. It could be, of course, that it did happen, and that I was not noticing. Very well; I will be very watchful now, and if any day-before-yesterdays happen I will make a note of it. It will be... more...