Fiction Books

ANTE SCRIPTUM As I sat of an early summer morning in the shade of a tree, eating fried bacon with a tinker, the thought came to me that I might some day write a book of my own: a book that should treat of the roads and by-roads, of trees, and wind in lonely places, of rapid brooks and lazy streams, of the glory of dawn, the glow of evening, and the purple solitude of night; a book of wayside inns and... more...

LESSON I. EQUIPMENT. Introduction: A few hints to the beginner as well as to those now in the business. The tools required and the best method of using same, for work at home or for business. The tools required for cleaning, repairing and pressing at home, or for business are as follows: For work at home, use an ordinary kitchen table with smooth top. For use in business, a table eight feet long, three... more...

CHAPTER I. Control of Trade and Plantations Under James I and Charles I. In considering the subject which forms the chief topic of this paper, we are not primarily concerned with the question of settlement, intimately related though it be to the larger problem of colonial control. We are interested rather in the early history of the various commissions, councils, committees, and boards appointed at one... more...

The Winston Plan The date was December twenty-third. The time along the Greenwich meridian, from which all world times are measured, was 8:15 P.M. At widely scattered points around the globe, four voices were raised simultaneously. Even an experienced observer could not have found a connection between the four voices and what they were saying, yet each voice started actions that would soon be... more...

CHAPTER I. THE “PILGRIM.” On the 2nd of February, 1873, the “Pilgrim,” a tight little craft of 400 tons burden, lay in lat. 43° 57’, S. and long. 165° 19’, W. She was a schooner, the property of James W. Weldon, a wealthy Californian ship-owner who had fitted her out at San Francisco, expressly for the whale-fisheries in the southern seas. James Weldon was accustomed every season to send... more...

THE MILLER'S WIFE OF ERBISDORF. The ancient and free mountain city of Freiberg lies only about five-and-twenty miles south-west of Dresden, yet has a far more severe climate than the Saxon capital—a fact that may be understood if we remember that the road which leads from Dresden to Freiberg is up hill almost all the way. The Saxon Erzgebirge must not be pictured as a chain of separate... more...

CHAPTER I INTRODUCING MALCOLM HAY If a man is not eager for adventure at the age of twenty-two, the enticement of romantic possibilities will never come to him. The chairman of the Ukraine Oil Company looked with a little amusement at the young man who sat on the edge of a chair by the chairman's desk, and noted how the eye of the youth had kindled at every fresh discouragement which the chairman... more...

ELIZA'S HUSBAND "Suppose," I said to one of the junior clerks at our office the other day, "you were asked to describe yourself in a few words, could you do it?" His answer that he could describe me in two was no answer at all. Also the two words were not a description, and were so offensive that I did not continue the conversation. I believe there are but few people who could give... more...

CHAPTER I. Alexander Crawford sat reading a book which he studied frequently with a profound interest. Not the Bible: that volume had indeed its place of honor in the room, but the book Crawford read was a smaller one; it was stoutly bound and secured by a brass lock, and it was all in manuscript. It was his private ledger, and it contained his bank account. Its contents seemed to give him much solid... more...

BLACKMAIL Half way along the north side of the main street of Highmarket an ancient stone gateway, imposing enough to suggest that it was originally the entrance to some castellated mansion or manor house, gave access to a square yard, flanked about by equally ancient buildings. What those buildings had been used for in other days was not obvious to the casual and careless observer, but to the least... more...