Fiction Books

Out of Paradise If I must tell more tales of Raffles, I can but back to our earliest days together, and fill in the blanks left by discretion in existing annals. In so doing I may indeed fill some small part of an infinitely greater blank, across which you may conceive me to have stretched my canvas for the first frank portrait of my friend. The whole truth cannot harm him now. I shall paint in every... more...

"The sun's gone under a cloud," called Grandpa cheerily over his shoulder, as he came into the dining room. Grandma, following close behind, answered laughingly, "Why, my dear, this is the brightest day we've had for two weeks!" "But look at Don's face," said Grandpa soberly, "and Joyce's too, for that matter"—glancing from one to the other.... more...

CHAPTER I.There, stranger lips shall give the greeting,There, stranger eyes shall mark the meeting;While the bosom, sad and lone,Turns its heavy heart-beats home.A September sun was casting its parting rays far over the dull waters of the Mississippi, as a steamer, with steady course, ploughed her way through the thick waves and "rounded to" at the thronged and busy wharf of New Orleans. Upon... more...

April 18, 1956 Dear Ben: It breaks my heart you didn't sign on for this trip. Your replacement, who calls himself an ichthyologist, has only one talent that pertains to fish—he drinks like one. There are nine of us in the expedition, and every one of us is fed up with this joker, Cleveland, already. We've only been on the island a week, and he's gone native, complete with beard, bare... more...

His person was not eminent enough, either by nature or circumstance, to deserve a public memorial simply for his own sake, after the lapse of a century and a half from the era in which he flourished. His character, in the view which we propose to take of it, may give a species of distinctness and point to some remarks on the tone and composition of New England society, modified as it became by new... more...

My great-great-great-uncle was one of the many sturdy, honest, high-spirited men to whom the early years of the last century gave birth. He was a brave man and a ready fighter, yet was he ever controlled in his actions by so nice a regard for the feelings of others, and through the strong fibre of his hardy nature ran a strain of such almost womanly gentleness and tenderness, that throughout the rather... more...

"SHE WANTED HER RIGHTS" Lorinda Cagwin invited Josiah and me to a reunion of the Allen family at her home nigh Washington, D.C., the birthplace of the first Allen we knowed anything about, and Josiah said: "Bein' one of the best lookin' and influential Allens on earth now, it would be expected on him to attend to it." And I fell in with the idee, partly to be done as I would... more...

It was his greatest pride in life that he had been a soldier—a soldier of the empire. (He was known simply as "The Soldier," and it is probable that there was not a man or woman, and certain that there was not a child in the Quarter who did not know him: the tall, erect old Sergeant with his white, carefully waxed moustache, and his face seamed with two sabre cuts. One of these cuts, all... more...

ust looking at Ellaby, you could tell he was going places. He was five feet nine inches tall and weighed a hundred and fifty pounds. He had an I. Q. of ninety-eight point five-seven, less than four hundredths off the mode. His hair was mousey and worn slightly long for a man, slightly short for a woman. Back in High Falls, where he was born, he was physically weaker than sixty percent of the men but... more...

CHAPTER I. Volcanoes in general—Origin of the Name—General Aspect—Crater—Cone—Subordinate Cones and Craters—Peak of Teneriffe—Lava-Streams—Cascades and Jets of Lava—Variations in its Consistency—Pumice—Different Sorts of Lava—Obsidian—Olivine—Sulphur—Dust,Ashes, &c.—Volcanic Silk—Volcanic Islands—Volcanic Fishes—HotWater, Mud, Vapours, &c—Volcanic... more...