Fiction Books

CHAPTER I "TWO TINY SPECKS OF NOTHING" "How do you feel, Dick! As spruce as you did an hour ago!" Candidate Greg Holmes put the question with a half-nervous laugh. He spoke in a whisper, too, as if to keep his agitation from reaching the notice of any of the score or more of other young men in the room of Mr. Ward, the aged notary at West Point. "I'll be glad when I see some... more...

ike Mallison and Nicko were in the office when the new clients entered. A girl and an elderly man. The girl smiled at Mike. Then she looked at Nicko and a sharp involuntary scream got past her lips. "It's all right, lady," Mike said. "He won't hurt you. He never injures a client. Won't you sit down?" Nicko wasn't offended. He was used to women reacting that way at... more...

CHAPTER I THE BINDLES AT HOME "Women," remarked Bindle, as he gazed reflectively into the tankard he had just drained, "women is all right if yer can keep 'em from marryin' yer." "I don't 'old wiv women," growled Ginger, casting a malevolent glance at the Blue Boar's only barmaid, as she stood smirking at the other end of the long leaden counter.... more...

THE COOK'S WEDDING GRISHA, a fat, solemn little person of seven, was standing by the kitchen door listening and peeping through the keyhole. In the kitchen something extraordinary, and in his opinion never seen before, was taking place. A big, thick-set, red-haired peasant, with a beard, and a drop of perspiration on his nose, wearing a cabman's full coat, was sitting at the kitchen table on... more...

I In the year 1873— No, do not turn away from such an opening; I shall reach our own day within a paragraph or so. In the year 1873, then, Johnny McComas was perfectly willing to stand to one side while Raymond Prince, surrounded by several of the fellows, came down, in his own negligent and self-assured way, the main stairway of Grant's Private Academy. For Johnny was newer there; Johnny was... more...

Duplex Street. “Some people are such fools!” said Richard Pellet; and, if public judgment was right, he knew what a fool was as well as any man in the great city of London. He was a big man was Richard Pellet, Esq., C.C., shipper, of Austin Friars, and known among city men as “the six-hundred-pounder;” and he knew a fool when he saw one. But whether at his office in the city, or down at his... more...

WILLIAM BACON'S MAN I The yellow March sun lay powerfully on the bare Iowa prairie, where the ploughed fields were already turning warm and brown, and only here and there in a corner or on the north side of the fence did the sullen drifts remain, and they were so dark and low that they hardly appeared to break the mellow brown of the fields. There passed also an occasional flock of geese, cheerful... more...

CHAPTER I THE CORNERSTONE OF LIBERTY Three little vessels—the Susan Constant, the Godspeed, and the Discovery—left England in December, 1606, under the command of Captain Christopher Newport, to found a colony on the distant shores of Virginia. Two decades earlier Sir Walter Raleigh had sent out a group of settlers to what is now North Carolina, and they had disappeared mysteriously. What had... more...

THE EARTHQUAKEHE train from 'Frisco was very late. It should have arrived at Hugson's siding at midnight, but it was already five o'clock and the gray dawn was breaking in the east when the little train slowly rumbled up to the open shed that served for the station-house. As it came to a stop the conductor called out in a loud voice: "Hugson's Siding!" At once a little girl... more...

CHAPTER I. THE schoolhouse at Waddy was not in the least like any of the trim State buildings that now decorate every Victorian township and mark every mining or agricultural centre that can scrape together two or three meagre classes; it was the result of a purely local enthusiasm, and was erected by public subscription shortly after Mr. Joel Ham, B.A., arrived in the district and let it be understood... more...