Fiction Books

THE ALARM.   Life, struck sharp on death,  Makes awful lightning.              —MRS. BROWNING. I had just come in from the street. I had a letter in my hand. It was for my fellow-lodger, a young girl who taught in the High School, and whom I had persuaded to share my room because of her pretty face and quiet ways. She was not at home, and I flung the letter down on the table, where... more...

GEORGE BORROW. It is a singular coincidence, perhaps, that during one and the same summer we should be celebrating centenaries of Samuel Pepys and George Borrow.  Pepys died in the early summer of 1703; Borrow was born in July, 1803.  Unlike each other in almost every respect, they are dui palor, as Borrow would say, in one very material point.  The reputation of each of them has risen to such a... more...

A WINTER COURTSHIP. The passenger and mail transportation between the towns of North Kilby and Sanscrit Pond was carried on by Mr. Jefferson Briley, whose two-seated covered wagon was usually much too large for the demands of business. Both the Sanscrit Pond and North Kilby people were stayers-at-home, and Mr. Briley often made his seven-mile journey in entire solitude, except for the limp leather... more...

Taylor sat back in his chair reading the morning newspaper. The warm kitchen and the smell of coffee blended with the comfort of not having to go to work. This was his Rest Period, the first for a long time, and he was glad of it. He folded the second section back, sighing with contentment. "What is it?" Mary said, from the stove. "They pasted Moscow again last night." Taylor nodded his... more...

THE HAMILTONS Fiction has said so much in regret of the old days when there were plantations and overseers and masters and slaves, that it was good to come upon such a household as Berry Hamilton's, if for no other reason than that it afforded a relief from the monotony of tiresome iteration. The little cottage in which he lived with his wife, Fannie, who was housekeeper to the Oakleys, and his... more...

TIME AND THE GODS Once when the gods were young and only Their swarthy servant Time was without age, the gods lay sleeping by a broad river upon earth. There in a valley that from all the earth the gods had set apart for Their repose the gods dreamed marble dreams. And with domes and pinnacles the dreams arose and stood up proudly between the river and the sky, all shimmering white to the morning. In... more...

PREFACE. In preparing this little treatise, I have tried to put the truths of Political Economy into a form suitable for elementary instruction. While connected with Owens College, it was my duty, as Cobden Lecturer on Political Economy, to instruct a class of pupil-teachers, in order that they might afterwards introduce the teaching of this important subject into elementary schools. There can be no... more...

CHAPTER I. A REMARKABLE WOMAN. I remember as well as though it were yesterday the first time I met Auntie Sue. It happened during my first roaming visit to the Ozarks, when I had wandered by chance, one day, into the Elbow Rock neighborhood. Twenty years it was, at least, before the time of this story. She was standing in the door of her little schoolhouse, the ruins of which you may still see, halfway... more...

Kyphotic (hump-backed) soft-shelled turtles have been known for many years in Asia and America. Gressitt (Peking Natural History Bulletin, 2 (pt. 4): 413-415, figs. 1-5, 1937) has reviewed accounts of such turtles, and recorded the anomaly in Amyda sinensis (Wiegmann) and A. steindachneri (Siebenrock) of Asia and in unidentified species in the United States. Records of kyphosis in American species... more...

INTRODUCTION. On September 28th, 1730, a rebellion burst forth in Stambul against Sultan Achmed III., whose cowardly hesitation to take the field against the advancing hosts of the victorious Persians had revolted both the army and the people. The rebellion began in the camp of the Janissaries, and the ringleader was one Halil Patrona, a poor Albanian sailor-man, who after plying for a time the trade... more...