Fiction Books

CHAPTER I. "Take any shape but that, and my firm nervesshall never tremble. Hence horrible shadow!Unreal mockery, hence!"—MACBETH It was a gloomy evening, towards the autumn of the year 1676, and the driving blasts which wept from the sea upon Greville Cross, a dreary and exposed mansion on the coast of Lancashire, gave promise of a stormy night and added to the desolation which at all traces... more...

ADVERTISEMENT. [Prefaced to Edition issued in 1808, edited by Sir Walter Scott.] After the lapse of more than a century since the author's death, the Works of Dryden are now, for the first time, presented to the public in a complete and uniform edition. In collecting the pieces of one of our most eminent English classics,—one who may claim at least the third place in that honoured list, and who... more...

I. The traveller from the Old World, who has a few weeks at his disposal for a visit to the United States, usually passes straight from one to another of our principal cities, such as Boston, New York, Washington, or Chicago, stopping for a day or two perhaps at Niagara Falls,--or, perhaps, after traversing a distance like that which separates England from Mesopotamia, reaches the vast table-lands of... more...

CHAPTER I WHEREIN FORTUNE TURNS HER WHEEL At ten o'clock on a morning in October—a dazzling, sunlit morning after hours of wind-lashed rain—a young man hurried out of Victoria Station and dodged the traffic and the mud-pools on his way towards Victoria Street. Suddenly he was brought to a stand by an unusual spectacle. A procession of the "unemployed" was sauntering out of Vauxhall... more...

INTRODUCTORY NOTE. Emile Verhaeren, remarkable among of the brilliant group of writers representing "Young Belgium," and one who has been recognized by the literary world of France as holding a foremost place among the lyric poets of the day was born at St. Amand, near Antwerp, in 1855. His childhood was passed on the banks of the Scheldt, in the midst of the wide-spreading Flemish plains, a... more...

I A swarm of children was playing on the damp floor of the shaft. They hung from the lower portions of the timber-work, or ran in and out between the upright supports, humming tunes, with bread-and-dripping in their hands; or they sat on the ground and pushed themselves forward across the sticky flagstones. The air hung clammy and raw, as it does in an old well, and already it had made the little... more...

INTRODUCTION This book consists of three unpublished essays and of fifteen reprinted from Longman's Magazine, Fraser's Magazine, the New Quarterly, Knowledge, Chambers's Magazine, the Graphic, and the Standard, where they have probably been little noticed since the time of their appearance. Several more volumes of this size might have been made by collecting all the articles which were... more...

The story which is narrated in the following pages came to me from the lips of my old friend Allan Quatermain, or Hunter Quatermain, as we used to call him in South Africa. He told it to me one evening when I was stopping with him at the place he bought in Yorkshire. Shortly after that, the death of his only son so unsettled him that he immediately left England, accompanied by two companions, his old... more...

CHAPTER I. LOVE ON THE OCEAN Nothing is so easy as falling in love on a long sea voyage, except falling out of love. Especially was this the case in the days when the wooden clippers did finely to land you in Sydney or in Melbourne under the four full months. We all saw far too much of each other, unless, indeed, we were to see still more. Our superficial attractions mutually exhausted, we lost heart... more...

INTRODUCTION It is a melancholy but instructive fact to remember that, in the opinion of him whom nature had adorned with the greatest intellect that the world has yet seen, selfishness and self-interest lie at the root of all human action. "For," as Napoleon said, "in ambition is to be found the chief motive force of humanity, and a man puts forth his best powers in proportion to his hopes... more...