Fiction Books

CHAPTER I ANDY BURKE "John, saddle my horse, and bring him around to the door." The speaker was a boy of fifteen, handsomely dressed, and, to judge from his air and tone, a person of considerable consequence, in his own opinion, at least. The person addressed was employed in the stable of his father, Colonel Anthony Preston, and so inferior in social condition that Master Godfrey always... more...

The deep and widespread interest which the writings of Mr. Rudyard Kipling have excited has naturally led to curiosity concerning their author and to a desire to know the conditions of his life. Much has been written about him which has had little or no foundation in truth. It seems, then, worth while, in order to prevent false or mistaken reports from being accepted as trustworthy, and in order to... more...

PREFACE The aim and purport of this edition of the Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge is to provide the general reader with an authoritative list of the poems and dramas hitherto published, and at the same time to furnish the student with an exhaustive summary of various readings derived from published and unpublished sources, viz. (1) the successive editions issued by the author, (2) holograph... more...

THE BOGIE MEN Scene: A Shed near where a coach stops. Darby comes in. Has a tin can of water in one hand, a sweep's bag and brush in the other. He lays down bag on an empty box and puts can on the floor. Is taking a showy suit of clothes out of bag and admiring them and is about to put them on when he hears some one coming and hurriedly puts them back into the bag. Taig: (At door.) God save all... more...

THE SEVEN LITTLE SISTERS. THE BALL ITSELF. Dear children, I have heard of a wonderful ball, which floats in the sweet blue air, and has little soft white clouds about it, as it swims along. There are many charming and astonishing things to be told of this ball, and some of them you shall hear. In the first place, you must know that it is a very big ball; far bigger than the great soft ball, of bright... more...

The Bad Boy Begins a Diary--Dad Has Become Manager for aCircus--The Bad Boy Expects to Curry the Hyena and Do Stuntson the Trapeze--Ma Says Pa Will Ogle the CircassianBeauty--Pa Buys Some Circus Clothes and Lets His WhiskersGrow. April 10, 19..--I never thought it would come to this, that I should keep a diary, because I am not a good little boy. Nobody ever keeps a diary except a boy that wants to be... more...

INTRODUCTION. During the last few years I have been urged by people in all parts of the world to re-issue some of the wonderful stories of genuine psychic experiences collected by my Father several years ago. These stories were published by him in two volumes in 1891-92; the first, entitled Real Ghost Stories, created so much interest and brought in so large a number of other stories of genuine... more...

CHAPTER I OF A CURIOUS MEETING OF EXTREMES On the dreary suburban edge of a very old, very ignorant, very sooty, hardhearted, stony-streeted, meanly grim, little provincial town there stands a gasometer. On one side of this gasometer begins a region of disappointed fields, which, however, has hardly begun before a railway embankment cuts across, at an angle convenient for its entirely obscuring the few... more...

OF CERTAIN DELICATE MATTERS In the religious cult of Gad and Meni, practised with such enthusiasm at Quicksands, the Saints' days were polo days, and the chief of all festivals the occasion of the match with the Banbury Hunt Club —Quicksands's greatest rival. Rival for more reasons than one, reasons too delicate to tell. Long, long ago there appeared in Punch a cartoon of Lord Beaconsfield... more...

I Twenty-five years ago the school children used to chant their lessons. The manner of their delivery was a singsong recitative between the utterance of an Episcopal minister and the drone of a tired sawmill. I mean no disrespect. We must have lumber and sawdust. I remember one beautiful and instructive little lyric that emanated from the physiology class. The most striking line of it was this:... more...