Fiction Books

I.  WHAT WAS SEEN FROM THE WINDOW OVERLOOKING THE DOWN In the days of high-waisted and muslin-gowned women, when the vast amount of soldiering going on in the country was a cause of much trembling to the sex, there lived in a village near the Wessex coast two ladies of good report, though unfortunately of limited means.  The elder was a Mrs. Martha Garland, a landscape-painter’s widow, and the... more...

CHAPTER I THE MAN CHRIST JESUS It is best to begin with a study of the teaching and character of Christ. Scholars for about a hundred years have been studying the Gospels historically, "like any other books." It is now reasonably certain that the first three Gospels—those which we know as the Gospels according to S. Matthew, S. Mark, and S. Luke—though not, of course, infallible or accurate... more...

CHAPTER I THE SCHOLAR At the age of six Randall Byrne could name and bound every state in the Union and give the date of its admission; at nine he was conversant with Homeric Greek and Caesar; at twelve he read Aristophanes with perfect understanding of the allusions of the day and divided his leisure between Ovid and Horace; at fifteen, wearied by the simplicity of Old English and Thirteenth Century... more...

CHAPTER I. MASTER THOMAS BECOMES A GOATHERD. I came into this world on the Shrove-Tuesday of the year 1499, just as they were coming together for mass. From this circumstance, my friends derived the confident hope that I should become a priest, for at that time that sort of superstition was still every where prevalent. I had one sister, named Christina; she alone was with my mother when I was born, and... more...

A crosser old woman than Mrs. Deborah Thornby was certainly not to be found in the whole village of Hilton. Worth, in country phrase, a power of money, and living (to borrow another rustic expression) upon her means, the exercise of her extraordinary faculty for grumbling and scolding seemed the sole occupation of her existence, her only pursuit, solace, and amusement; and really it would have been a... more...

Two gentlemen were seated, one March morning in 189—, in the private office of French and Company, Limited, on lower Broadway. Mr. Kirby, the junior partner—a man of thirty-five, with brown hair and mustache, clean-cut, handsome features, and an alert manner, was smoking cigarettes almost as fast as he could roll them, and at the same time watching the electric clock upon the wall and getting up... more...

Esau Tankardew. Certainly, Mr Tankardew was not a pattern of cleanliness, either in his house or his person. Someone had said of him sarcastically, “that there was nothing clean in his house but his towels;” and there was a great deal of truth in the remark. He seemed to dwell in an element of cobwebs; the atmosphere in which he lived, rather than breathed, was apparently a mixture of fog and dust.... more...

INTRODUCTION. BY THE AUTHOR OF "GOLDEN STEPS," &c. Works of fiction are to be approved when they subserve the interests of morality and religion. The Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments—the ancient classics—the most distinguished productions of modern ages—afford striking illustrations of the beautiful and instructive lessons of virtue and piety, which may be conveyed in fabulous... more...

ABRAHAM LINCOLN Two Chroniclers: The two speaking together: Kinsmen, you shall behold Our stage, in mimic action, mould A man's character. This is the wonder, always, everywhere—Not that vast mutability which is event,The pits and pinnacles of change,But man's desire and valiance that rangeAll circumstance, and come to port unspent. Agents are these events, these ecstasies,And tribulations,... 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...