Fiction Books

CHAPTER I. PRELIMINARY REMARKS.—PRESENT POPULATIONS OF THE BRITISH ISLES.—ROMANS, ETC.—PRE-HISTORIC PERIOD.—THE IRISH ELK.—HOW FAR CONTEMPORANEOUS WITH MAN.—STONE PERIOD.—MODES OF SEPULTURE.—THE PHYSICAL CONDITION OF THE SOIL—ITS FAUNA.—SKULLS OF THE STONE PERIOD.—THE BRONZE PERIOD.—GOLD ORNAMENTS.—ALLOYS AND CASTINGS.—HOW FAR NATIVE OR FOREIGN.—EFFECT OF THE INTRODUCTION... more...

CHAPTER I The IPV Arcturus Sets Out for Mars A narrow football of steel, the Interplanetary Vessel Arcturus stood upright in her berth in the dock like an egg in its cup. A hundred feet across and a hundred and seventy feet deep was that gigantic bowl, its walls supported by the structural steel and concrete of the dock and lined with hard-packed bumper-layers of hemp and fibre. High into the air... more...

THE MIGHTY FOE One afternoon, a hundred and one years ago, old Hans took little Bettina to visit her godmother, Frau Schmidt, who lived in a red-roofed house not far from the old church of St. Michael's in Jena. Bettina loved to go to Frau Schmidt's. First, there was Wilhelm, her godmother's son, who was so good to her, and cut her toys out of wood, and told her all kinds of fine... more...

THE peaceful little French village of Domrémy lies in the valley of the river Meuse, at the south of the duchy of Bar, and there five hundred years ago was born the wonderful "Maid of France," as she was called; she who at an age when other girls were entirely occupied with simple diversions or matters of household importance was dreaming great dreams, planning that vast military campaign which... more...

BED AND BOARD AT seven o'clock on the morning of that fine, bright, warm August Sunday, M. de Guersaint was already up and dressed in one of the two little rooms which he had fortunately been able to secure on the third floor of the Hotel of the Apparitions. He had gone to bed at eleven o'clock the night before and had awoke feeling quite fresh and gay. As soon as he was dressed he entered... 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 I Were the events of this nether sphere governed by the calculus of probabilities, Count Abel Larinski and Mlle. Antoinette Moriaz would almost unquestionably have arrived at the end of their respective careers without ever having met. Count Larinski lived in Vienna, Austria; Mlle. Moriaz never had been farther from Paris than Cormeilles, where she went every spring to remain throughout the... more...

CHAPTER I. Methinks I feel this youth's perfections,With an invisible and subtle stealth,To creep in at mine eyes.—Shakespeare. It had come at last, the day of days, for the two great American universities; Harvard and Yale were going to play their annual game of football and the railroad station of Springfield, Mass., momentarily became more and more thronged with eager partisans of both sides... more...