Fiction Books

CHAPTER I. A quartette party—three violins and a 'cello—sat in summer evening weather in a garden. This garden was full of bloom and odor, and was shut in by high walls of ripe old brick. Here and there were large-sized plaster casts—Venus, Minerva, Mercury, a goat-hoofed Pan with his pipes, a Silence with a finger at her lips. They were all sylvan green and crumbled with exposure to the... more...

BRANDON was looking at the Milky Way. Through his canopy, he could see it trailing across the black velvet of space like a white bridal veil. Below his SC9B scout-ship stretched the red dust deserts of Sirius Three illuminated by the thin light of two ice moons. He looked at the Milky Way. [p21]He looked at it as a man looks at a flickering fireplace and thinks of other things. He thought of the sun,... more...

I. I woke up very gradually this morning, and it took me a little while to bethink myself where I had slept—that it had not been in my own room in the Cromwell Road. I lay a-bed, with eyes half-closed, drowsily look looking forward to the usual procession of sober-hued London hours, and, for the moment, quite forgot the journey of yesterday, and how it had left me in Paris, a guest in the smart new... more...

CHAPTER I HAROLD QUARITCH MEDITATES There are things and there are faces which, when felt or seen for the first time, stamp themselves upon the mind like a sun image on a sensitized plate and there remain unalterably fixed. To take the instance of a face—we may never see it again, or it may become the companion of our life, but there the picture is just as we /first/ knew it, the same smile or frown,... more...

CHAP. I. The Origin of Man's Ideas upon the Divinity. If man possessed the courage, if he had the requisite industry to recur to the source of those opinions which are most deeply engraven on his brain; if he rendered to himself a faithful account of the reasons which make him hold these opinions as sacred; if he coolly examined the basis of his hopes, the foundation of his fears, he would find... more...

THE LAY OF MARIE. CANTO FIRST.     The guests are met, the feast is near,    But Marie does not yet appear!    And to her vacant seat on high    Is lifted many an anxious eye.    The splendid show, the sumptuous board,    The long details which feuds afford,    And discontent is prone to hold,    Absorb the factious and the cold;—    Absorb dull minds, who, in... more...

ITo the gods themselves is due the discovery, to Apollo and Artemis, patrons of the chase and protectors of the hound. (1) As a guerdon they bestowed it upon Cheiron, (2) by reason of his uprightness, and he took it and was glad, and turned the gift to good account. At his feet sat many a disciple, to whom he taught the mystery of hunting and of chivalry (3)—to wit, Cephalus, Asclepius, Melanion,... more...

I It was February off the Banks, and so thick was the weather that, on the upper decks, one could have driven a sleigh. Inside the smoking-room Austin Ford, as securely sheltered from the blizzard as though he had been sitting in front of a wood fire at his club, ordered hot gin for himself and the ship's doctor. The ship's doctor had gone below on another "hurry call" from the widow.... more...

One cold morning in March, Bobby Hill was wakened by a sound he had not heard since last Fall, "Chirp, chirp, cheer-up." "That sounds just like a robin," he thought. He sat up in bed and looked out of the window. It was a cold, dark, stormy morning. Heavy clouds covered the sky. The North wind was blowing the snow hither and thither. Bobby leaned nearer the window so he could see the... more...

CHAPTER I.   "Look you,  Who comes here: a young man, and an old, in solemn talk." As You Like it. It is easy to foresee that this country is destined to undergo great and rapid changes. Those that more properly belong to history, history will doubtless attempt to record, and probably with the questionable veracity and prejudice that are apt to influence the labours of that particular muse;... more...