Fiction Books

A Bolt from the Blue The atmosphere of the office that morning was a shade less genial than usual. We had all of us fought our way downtown through such a storm of wind, snow, slush, and sleet as is to be found nowhere save in mid-March New York, and our tempers had suffered accordingly. I had found a cab unobtainable, and there was, of course, the inevitable jam on the Elevated, with the trains many... more...

I 1 The cigar was a large one and Robert Stonehouse was small. At the precise moment, in fact, when he leant out of the upstairs bedroom window, instinctively seeking fresh air, he became eight years old. He did not know this, though he did know that it was his birthday and that a birthday was a great and presumably auspicious occasion. His conception of what a birthday ought to be was based primarily... more...

1. FILMER In truth the mastery of flying was the work of thousands of men—this man a suggestion and that an experiment, until at last only one vigorous intellectual effort was needed to finish the work. But the inexorable injustice of the popular mind has decided that of all these thousands, one man, and that a man who never flew, should be chosen as the discoverer, just as it has chosen to honour... more...

CHAPTER I. DUDIE DUNNE PLAYS A GREAT TRICK TO RUN DOWN A CRIMINAL—AS SIMPLE JOHN HE APPEARS INNOCENT, BUT WHEN HIS MASK GOES OFF THE "FUR FLIES." "Oh, fellers, look at this! he's strayed or stolen; let's go for him." A group of little toughs were gathered at a street corner in a low locality in the city of New York when a dude of the first water with the regular Anglo step... more...

CHAPTER I "He don't look right and he don't sleep right," complained Aunt Almira Day, swinging to and fro ponderously in one of the porch rockers and fanning herself vigorously with a folded copy of the Fireside Favorite. "If it wasn't for his puttin' away jest as many victuals as usual I'd sartain sure think he was sickenin' for something." "Oh! I hope... more...

CHAPTER I BETTY Two whip-poor-wills were uttering their insistent note, hidden somewhere among the thick foliage of the maple and basswood trees that towered above the spring down behind the house where the Ballards lived. The sky in the west still glowed with amber light, and the crescent moon floated like a golden boat above the horizon’s edge. The day had been unusually warm, and the family were... more...

PREFACE The prevailing taste of the public for anecdote has been censured and ridiculed by critics who aspire to the character of superior wisdom; but if we consider it in a proper point of view, this taste is an incontestable proof of the good sense and profoundly philosophic temper of the present times. Of the numbers who study, or at least who read history, how few derive any advantage from their... more...

Chapter I Is it the Ghost? It was the evening on which MM. Debienne and Poligny, the managers of the Opera, were giving a last gala performance to mark their retirement. Suddenly the dressing-room of La Sorelli, one of the principal dancers, was invaded by half-a-dozen young ladies of the ballet, who had come up from the stage after "dancing" Polyeucte. They rushed in amid great confusion, some... more...

"When we two partedIn silence and tears,Half broken-heartedTo sever for years." MUST I really go?" "I'm afraid it has come to that, Philippa! I believe I have kept you here too long already. You're ten years old now, growing a tall girl, and not learning half the things you ought to. I feel there's something wrong about you, but I don't know quite how to set it... more...

IN WHICH I SLIP Sultan was a horse for a man, long and regular in his stride, perfect in action, quick to obey, cat-like at need. I might have ridden him from the day on which the blacksmith drank his colt-ale, for we understood each other exactly, and I was as comfortable on his back as in my bed at the Hanyards. In the open road at the mere-end, he settled down into a steady, loping trot, and I was... more...