Fiction Books

PROLOGUE. It was the month of January, 1516. The night was dark and tempestuous; the thunder growled around; the lightning flashed at short intervals: and the wind swept furiously along in sudden and fitful gusts. The streams of the great Black Forest of Germany babbled in playful melody no more, but rushed on with deafening din, mingling their torrent roar with the wild creaking of the huge oaks, the... more...

TALES OF THE CALIPH. That stories such as those in the "Arabian Nights," and fairy tales of every kind, should delight us all, men and women no less than boys and girls, is very natural. We find it charming to escape for a period, however brief, from all the familiar surroundings of modern life, and on opening a volume to pass at once into another region, where all is strange, and where the... more...

PREFACE Those who during the past thirty or forty years have frequented working men's clubs or other centres of discussion in which, here and there, an Owenite survivor or a Chartist veteran was to be found, will often have heard of the Guernsey Market House. Here, it would be explained, was a building provided by the Guernsey community for its own uses, without borrowing, without any toll of... more...

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CHAPTER I. NORA. "Why, then, Miss Nora—" "Yes, Hannah?" "You didn't see the masther going this way, miss?" "What do you mean, Hannah? Father is never at home at this hour." "I thought maybe—" said Hannah. She spoke in a dubious voice, backing a little away. Hannah was a small, squat woman, of a truly Irish type. Her nose was celestial, her mouth wide,... more...

PREFACE "Sanine" is a thoroughly uncomfortable book, but it has a fierce energy which has carried it in a very short space of time into almost every country in Europe and at last into this country, where books, like everything else, are expected to be comfortable. It has roused fury both in Russia and in Germany, but, being rather a furious effort itself, it has thriven on that, and reached an... more...

PREFACE. The following pages have been written by my request with a view to making the Soldiers of The Salvation Army somewhat familiar with the life-story of one of the most remarkable men this world has ever seen. While many and varied will be the opinions respecting the methods employed by Francis of Assisi, and while some will doubtless strongly dissent from these methods, yet I think no serious... more...

The Prologue. Your silence and attention, worthy friends,That your free spirits may with more pleasing senseRelish the life of this our active scene:To which intent, to calm this murmuring breath,We ring this round with our invoking spells;If that your listning ears be yet prepardTo entertain the subject of our play,Lend us your patience.Tis Peter Fabell, a renowned Scholler,Whose fame hath still been... more...

CHAPTER I The Second Son Lady Rosemary Granton! Strange how pleasant memories arise, how disagreeable nightmares loom up before the mental vision at the sound of a name! Lady Rosemary Granton! As far back as I could remember, that name had sounded familiar in my ears. As I grew from babyhood to boyhood, from boyhood to youth, it was drummed into me by my father that Lady Rosemary Granton, some day,... more...

The Woman of the Saeter. By Jerome K. Jerome. Illustrations by A. S. Boyd. Wild-Reindeer stalking is hardly so exciting a sport as the evening’s verandah talk in Norroway hotels would lead the trustful traveller to suppose. Under the charge of your guide, a very young man with the dreamy, wistful eyes of those who live in valleys, you leave the farmstead early in the forenoon, arriving towards... more...