Fiction Books

CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION "An editor," says Dr. Johnson, is "he that revises or prepares any work for publication;" and this definition of an editor's duty seems wholly right and satisfactory. But now that the revision of these letters is apparently complete, the reader has some right to expect a formal introduction to a lady whose name he has, in all probability, never heard; and one... more...

ECONOMY IN DISTRIBUTION.   We had lately occasion to proceed by an omnibus from a country town to a station on a railway, by which we were to return to the city where we have our customary abode. On arriving at the station, we learned that we should have to wait an hour for an up train, the omnibus being timed in relation to a down one, which was about to pass. Had this arrangement been the only one... more...

CHAPTER XVIII. The streets swarmed with the populace troops as they passed to their destination. Among those of the Mobiles who especially caught the eye were two companies in which Enguerrand de Vandemar and Victor de Mauleon commanded. In the first were many young men of good family, or in the higher ranks of the bourgeoisie, known to numerous lookers-on; there was something inspiriting in their gay... more...

INTRODUCTION. In 1814, while Napoleon was banished in the island of Elba, the Empress Marie Louise and her grandmother, Marie Caroline, Queen of Naples, happened to meet at Vienna. The one, who had been deprived of the French crown, was seeking to be put in possession of her new realm, the Duchy of Parma; the other, who had fled from Sicily to escape the yoke of her pretended protectors, the English,... more...

PROLOGUE There was no mistake this time: he had struck gold at last! It had lain there before him a moment ago—a misshapen piece of brown-stained quartz, interspersed with dull yellow metal; yielding enough to have allowed the points of his pick to penetrate its honeycombed recesses, yet heavy enough to drop from the point of his pick as he endeavored to lift it from the red earth. He was seeing all... more...

CHAPTER I "I'm going up to the village," I told Dorinda, taking my cap from the hook behind the dining-room door. "What for?" asked Dorinda, pushing me to one side and reaching for the dust-cloth, which also was behind the door. "Oh, just for the walk," I answered, carelessly. "Um-hm," observed Dorinda. "Um-hm" is, I believe, good Scotch for "Yes." I... more...

A strong wind swept over the great forest, sending green leaves and twigs in showers before it, and bringing clouds in battalions from the west. The air presently grew cold, and then heavy drops of rain came, pattering at first like shot, but soon settling into a hard and steady fall that made the day dark and chill, tingeing the whole wilderness with gloom and desolation. The deer sought its covert, a... more...

THOMAS PAINE, in his Will, speaks of this work as The American Crisis, remembering perhaps that a number of political pamphlets had appeared in London, 1775-1776, under general title of "The Crisis." By the blunder of an early English publisher of Paine's writings, one essay in the London "Crisis" was attributed to Paine, and the error has continued to cause confusion. This... more...

CHAPTER I. No! as I said at the end of the last chapter but one, before I was led away by the circumstances of that time to give the world the benefit of my magnetic reminiscences—valeat quantum!—I was not yet bitten, despite Colley Grattan's urgings, with any temptation to attempt fiction, and "passion, me boy!" But I am surprised on turning over my old diaries to find how much I was... more...

THE STRANGER. That portion of territory known throughout Christendom as Kentucky, was, at an early period, the theatre of some of the wildest, most hardily contested, and bloody scenes ever placed on record. In fact its very name, derived from the Indian word Kan-tuck-kee, which was applied to it long before its discovery by the whites, is peculiarly significant in meaning—being no less than "the... more...