Fiction Books

I "YORK FACTORY, HUDSON'S BAY,"23rd September, 1747. "MY DEAR COUSIN FANNY,—It was a year last April Fool's Day, I left you on the sands there at Mablethorpe, no more than a stone's throw from the Book-in-Hand Inn, swearing that you should never see me or hear from me again. You remember how we saw the coast-guards flash their lights here and there, as they searched the... more...

CHAPTER I. ANTECEDENTS OF THE REVOLUTION. During the last half of the second century before Christ Rome was undisputed mistress of the civilised world. A brilliant period of foreign conquest had succeeded the 300 years in which she had overcome her neighbours and made herself supreme in Italy. In 146 B.C. she had given the death-blow to her greatest rival, Carthage, and had annexed Greece. In 140... more...

POST-PRANDIAL WIT There is a sense, of course, in which everything from the pages of Mr. Punch might be regarded as coming into a collection entitled "After Dinner Stories." All good stories are really for telling after dinner. Somehow or other one seldom associates wit and humour with the breakfast table, although the celebrated breakfast parties of Rogers, the banker, were doubtless in no way... more...

BACK TO BACK Mrs. Scutts, concealed behind the curtain, gazed at the cab in uneasy amazement. The cabman clambered down from the box and, opening the door, stood by with his hands extended ready for any help that might be needed. A stranger was the first to alight, and, with his back towards Mrs. Scutts, seemed to be struggling with something in the cab. He placed a dangling hand about his neck and,... more...

DANTE Critical Notice OF DANTE'S LIFE AND GENIUS.[1] Dante was a very great poet, a man of the strongest passions, a claimant of unbounded powers to lead and enlighten the world; and he lived in a semi-barbarous age, as favourable to the intensity of his imagination, as it was otherwise to the rest of his pretensions. Party zeal, and the fluctuations of moral and critical opinion, have at... more...

I've got an office in the Daily Standard building and sometimes when things are slow in my line—theatrical bookings—I drift upstairs and talk to the guy who writes the column, The Soldier's Friend, for the Standard. On this particular morning I walked into his office and found it empty so I sat down and waited, figuring he was downstairs getting a mug of coffee. After I cleaned my nails... more...

THE LOVE-PHILTRE OF IKEY SCHOENSTEIN The Blue Light Drug Store is downtown, between the Bowery and First Avenue, where the distance between the two streets is the shortest. The Blue Light does not consider that pharmacy is a thing of bric-a-brac, scent and ice-cream soda. If you ask it for pain-killer it will not give you a bonbon. The Blue Light scorns the labour-saving arts of modern pharmacy. It... more...

INTRODUCTION A Voyage to Cacklogallinia appeared in London, in 1727, from the pen of a pseudonymous "Captain Samuel Brunt." Posterity has continued to preserve the anonymity of the author, perhaps more jealously than he would have wished. Whatever his real parentage, he must for the present be referred only to the literary family of which his progenitor "Captain Lemuel Gulliver" is the... more...

TO THE PUBLIC. The papers which are herewith submitted to you for your perusal and consideration, were delivered into my hands by Mr. Berl Trout. The papers will speak for themselves, but Mr. Trout now being dead I feel called upon to say a word concerning him. Mr. Berl Trout was Secretary of State in the Imperium In Imperio, from the day of its organization until the hour of his sad death. He was,... more...

THE AMIN OF KALAA.Emerging from these gloomy caflons, and passing the Beni-Mansour, the village of Thasaerth (where razors and guns are made), Arzou (full of blacksmiths), and some other towns, we enter the Beni-Aidel, where numerous white villages, wreathed with ash trees, lie crouched like nests of eggs on the summits of the primary mountains, with the magnificent peaks of Atlas cut in sapphire upon... more...