Fiction Books

INTRODUCTION. Throughout this book, and the next, you will find passages taken from the writings of the best English authors. But the passages are not all equal, nor are they all such as we would call "the best," and the more you read and are able to judge them for yourselves, the better you will be able to see what is the difference between the best and those that are not so good. By the best... more...

  After the great war it is difficult, to point out a single nation that is happy; but this has come out of the war, that there is not a single nation outside India, that is not either free or striving to be free. It is said that we, too, are on the road to freedom, that it is better to be on the certain though slow course of gradual unfoldment of freedom than to take the troubled and dangerous path... more...

CHAPTER 1 One side of the street glittered like a brilliant eruption with the light from a row of shops; the other, lined with houses, was almost deserted, for the people, drawn like moths by the glare, crowded and jostled under the lights. It was Saturday night, and Waterloo, by immemorial habit, had flung itself on the shops, bent on plunder. For an hour past a stream of people had flowed from the... more...

CHAPTER I TREE-PLANTING Land hunger is so general that it may be regarded as a natural craving. Artificial modes of life, it is true, can destroy it, but it is apt to reassert itself in later generations. To tens of thousands of bread-winners in cities a country home is the dream of the future, the crown and reward of their life-toil. Increasing numbers are taking what would seem to be the wiser... more...

Gordon never forgot the sensation he experienced on first beholding it. There was no mist in the midnight. The moon was large and low. The darkness of the dense, towering forests on either hand impinged in no wise on the melancholy realm of wan light in which the Mississippi lay, unshadowed, solitary, silent as always, its channel here a mile or more in breadth. He had been observing how the mighty... more...

CHAPTER I Crash! Bang! Bang! "The March of the Pilgrims" came to an abrupt end. John Lansing Birch laid down his viola and bow, whirled about, and flung out his arms in despair. "Oh, this crowd is hopeless!" he groaned. "Never mind any other instrument, providing yours is heard. This march is supposed to die away in the distance! You murder it in front of the house. That second... more...

INTRODUCTION By means of a study in religious personality, I seek in these pages to discover a reason for the present rather ignoble situation of the Church in the affections of men. My purpose is to examine the mind of modern Christianity, the only religion of the world with which the world can never be done, because it has the lasting quality of growth, and to see whether in the condition of that... more...

THE UNTRAINED MAN UNDER THIRTY-FIVE  "Since we deserved the name of friends,    And thine effect so lives in me,    A part of mine may live in thee,  And move thee on to noble ends." Every woman has had, at some time in her life, an experience with man in the raw. In reality, one cannot set down with any degree of accuracy the age when his rawness attacks him, or the time when he has... more...

CONCORD THIRTY YEARS AGO. To one looking westward from Boston State House there appears a line of rugged, precipitous hills extending across the country from southwest to northeast. Having ascended these heights, we perceive beyond them an irregular line of pale blue mountains, of which Wachusett is the most southerly peak, and which is in fact a portion of the White Mountain range extending through... more...

CHAPTER I FAREWELL PARTY The party was about to break up. It had not been very successful. Lieutenant O'Malley had devoured only one blueberry pie. This meant he was feeling far from par. He sat sprawled in a big chair that once had belonged to a Moslem prince, his skinny legs elevated to the top of the mess table. "Sure, an' you fellows are skunks, beatin' it off to do a soft... more...