Fiction Books

CHAPTER XVIII. FREEDOM PROCLAIMED TO ALL. While mentally revolving the question of Emancipation—now, evidently "coming to a head,"—no inconsiderable portion of Mr. Lincoln's thoughts centered upon, and his perplexities grew out of, his assumption that the "physical difference" between the Black and White—the African and Caucasian races, precluded the idea of their living... more...

Part One INTRODUCTION The writer of this singular autobiography was my cousin, who died at the ——- Criminal Lunatic Asylum, of which he had been an inmate three years. He had been removed thither after a sudden and violent attack of homicidal mania (which fortunately led to no serious consequences), from ——- Jail, where he had spent twenty-five years, having been condemned to penal servitude... more...

CHAPTER I ALARUMS AND EXCURSIONS The restaurant of the Hotel St. Ives seems, as I look back on it, an odd spot to have served as stage wings for a melodrama, pure and simple. Yet a melodrama did begin there. No other word fits the case. The inns of the Middle Ages, which, I believe, reeked with trap-doors and cutthroats, pistols and poisoned daggers, offered nothing weirder than my experience, with its... more...

CHAPTER I. THE BIRTHPLACE OF ISRAEL. The traveller who at the present day is content to travel in the good old Asiatic style, neither rushed along by a locomotive, nor dragged by a stage-coach; who is willing to enjoy hospitalities at far-scattered farmhouses, instead of paying his bill at an inn; who is not to be frightened by any amount of loneliness, or to be deterred by the roughest roads or the... more...

CHAPTER FIRST OLD MARY ANN For three days the Spring sun had been shining out of a clear sky and casting a gleaming, golden coverlet over the blue waters of Lake Geneva. Storm and rain had ceased. The breeze murmured softly and pleasantly up in the ash-trees, and all around in the green fields the yellow buttercups and snow-white daisies glistened in the bright sunshine. Under the ash-trees, the clear... more...

Habitat In Kansas this kite seems to prefer open and even barren terrain, in contrast with its habitat in forests of the southeastern states. Typical habitat of Kansas is that of the High Plains, dominated by a short-grass climax of blue grama (Bouteloua gracilis) and buffalo grass (Buchloë dactyloides), with sagebrush (Artemisia sp.), prickly pear (Opuntia sp.) and other somewhat xerophytic... more...

On his last night on Earth, Ted Graham stepped out of a glass-walled telephone booth, ducked to avoid a swooping moth that battered itself in a frenzy against a bare globe above the booth. Ted Graham was a long-necked man with a head of pronounced egg shape topped by prematurely balding sandy hair. Something about his lanky, intense appearance suggested his occupation: certified public accountant. He... more...

The law is usually supposed to be a stern mistress, not to be lightly wooed, and yielding only to the most ardent pursuit. But even law, like love, sits more easily on some natures than on others. This was the case with Mr. Robinson Asbury. Mr. Asbury had started life as a bootblack in the growing town of Cadgers. From this he had risen one step and become porter and messenger in a barber-shop. This... more...

I A faint, golden, metallic rim appears in the east where the sun is rising. The city is beginning to stir; already can be heard an occasional distant rumble of trucks rolling into the streets from the country, large farm-wagons heavily loaded with supplies for the markets—with hay and meat and cordwood. And these wagons make more noise than usual because the pavements are still brittle from nightly... more...

It was all glory and glitter one bright day in Babylon. It was that eventful morning, ages and ages ago, when the armies of the East and the armies of the West, with the epigonoi, or brilliant young "sons of the King," twenty thousand in line, with horse-archers and foot-archers, and slingers and spearmen, and war-elephants and war-chariots, and all the galleys and barges of the King's... more...