Fiction Books

The evening when March closed with Mrs. Green's reduced offer, and decided to take her apartment, the widow whose lodgings he had rejected sat with her daughter in an upper room at the back of her house. In the shaded glow of the drop-light she was sewing, and the girl was drawing at the same table. From time to time, as they talked, the girl lifted her head and tilted it a little on one side so... more...

CHAPTER I. THE LETTER.   Katie Clifford sat on the floor, in the sun, feeding her white mice. She had a tea-spoon and a cup of bread and milk in her hands. If she had been their own mother she could not have smiled down on the little creatures more sweetly. "'Cause I spect they's hungry, and that's why I'm goin' to give 'em sumpin' to eat. Shut your moufs and... more...

CHAPTER I The Last Night of Carnival It was Carnival time in the ancient and once imperial, but now provincial and remote, city of Ravenna. It was Carnival time, and the very acme and high-tide of that season of mirth and revel. For the theory of Carnival observance is, that the life of it, unlike that of most other things and beings, is intensified with a constantly crescendo movement up to the last... more...

CRITICISM EVANGELINE A review of Mr. Longfellow's poem. EUREKA! Here, then, we have it at last,—an American poem, with the lack of which British reviewers have so long reproached us. Selecting the subject of all others best calculated for his purpose,—the expulsion of the French settlers of Acadie from their quiet and pleasant homes around the Basin of Minas, one of the most sadly romantic... more...

THE SLAVER.   On the 18th day of February 1850, Her Majesty's steamship Rattler was lying at anchor about twenty miles to the northward of Ambriz, a slave depôt situated on the western coast of Africa. Week after week had passed away in dull uniformity; while the oppressive heat, the gentle breeze which scarcely ruffled the surface of the deep, and the lazy motion of the vessel as it rolled on... more...

JOSEPH BRANT—THAYENDANEGEA. Few tasks are more difficult of accomplishment than the overturning of the ideas and prejudices which have been conceived in our youth, which have grown up with us to mature age, and which have finally become the settled convictions of our manhood. The overturning process is none the less difficult when, as is not seldom the case, those ideas and convictions are widely at... more...

What one first notes about The Queen Pedauque is the fact that in this ironic and subtle book is presented a story which, curiously enough, is remarkable for its entire innocence of subtlety and irony. Abridge the "plot" into a synopsis, and you will find your digest to be what is manifestly the outline of a straightforward, plumed romance by the elder Dumas. Indeed, Dumas would have handled... more...

Nobody’s Child. “Oh, how full of briars is this working-day world!”                 Shakspere. “It is so cold, Mother!” The woman addressed languidly roused herself from the half-sheltered nook of the forest in which she and her child had taken refuge. She was leaning with her back supported by a giant oak, and the child was in her arms. The age of the child was about eight.... more...

CHAPTER I WANTED—-A DOUGHFACE! "Now, then, Danny boy, we——-" First Classman Dave Darrin, midshipman at the United States NavalAcademy, did not finish what he was about to say. While speaking he had closed the door behind him and had stepped into the quarters occupied jointly by himself and by Midshipman Daniel Dalzell, also of the first or upper class. "Danny boy isn't here.... more...

CHAPTER I 'Let us be quite clear, Aunt Pattie—when does this young woman arrive?' 'In about half an hour. But really, Edward, you need take no trouble! she is coming to visit me, and I will see that she doesn't get in your way. Neither you nor Eleanor need trouble your heads about her.' Miss Manisty—a small elderly lady in a cap—looked at her nephew with a mild and... more...