Fiction Books

INTRODUCTION. The following treatise is to some extent a re-statement and partly an amplification of a theory I have elsewhere advanced. But as that theory, although it has been advocated by several writers, especially during the past half-century, is not familiar to everybody, some remarks of an explanatory nature are necessary. And if this explanation assumes a narrative form, not without a tinge of... more...

JOHN SMITH.   To-day I strayed in Charing Cross as wretched as could be  With thinking of my home and friends across the tumbling sea;  There was no water in my eyes, but my spirits were depressed  And my heart lay like a sodden, soggy doughnut in my breast.  This way and that streamed multitudes, that gayly passed me by—  Not one in all the crowd knew me and not a one knew I!  "Oh,... more...

CHAPTER I.   "With fearless pride I say  That she is healthful, fleet, and strong  And down the rocks will leap along,  Like rivulets in May." WORDSWORTH. Along a beautiful Devonshire lane, with banks of rock overhung by tall bowery hedges, rode a lively and merry pair, now laughing and talking, now summoning by call or whistle the spaniel that ran by their side, or careered through the... more...

PART I THE POLITICAL OBJECTIVE The proper understanding of a battle and of its historical significance is only possible in connection with the campaign of which it forms a part; and the campaign can only be understood when we know the political object which it was designed to serve. A battle is no more than an incident in a campaign. However decisive in its immediate result upon the field, its value to... more...

CHAPTER I. THE BENT TWIG. Caius Simpson was the only son of a farmer who lived on the north-west coast of Prince Edward's Island. The farmer was very well-to-do, for he was a hard-working man, and his land produced richly. The father was a man of good understanding, and the son had been born with brains; there were traditions of education in the family, hence the name Caius; it was no plan of the... more...

CHAPTER I THE SHADOW OF A COWL Keppel Stuart, M.D., F. R. S., awoke with a start and discovered himself to be bathed in cold perspiration. The moonlight shone in at his window, but did not touch the bed, therefore his awakening could not be due to this cause. He lay for some time listening for any unfamiliar noise which might account for the sudden disturbance of his usually sound slumbers. In the... more...

I am not a susceptible woman. I am objective rather than subjective, and a fairly full experience of life has taught me that most of my impressions are from within out rather than the other way about. For instance, obsession at one time a few years ago of a shadowy figure on my right, just beyond the field of vision, was later exposed as the result of a defect in my glasses. In the same way Maggie, my... more...

Ichabod's Island The tide was at ebb. The noisily rushing spume-spotted waters of the sea were pounding the hard-sand shore of the easterly side of a beautiful island, nestling as a jewel in its setting just within the Capes, which form the shores on either side of Beaufort Inlet, but so exposed that when the winds blow from the sea the full force of the breakers is felt at this point. As this... more...

I Xiormonez is the most inaccessible place in Spain. Only one train arrives there in the course of the day, and that arrives at two o'clock in the morning; only one train leaves it, and that starts an hour before sunrise. No one has ever been able to discover what happens to the railway officials during the intermediate one-and-twenty hours. A German painter I met there, who had come by the only... more...

At first the two scientists thought the Indian attack on them was a joke perpetrated by some of their friends. After all, modern Indians did not attack white men any more. Except that these did. George Arthbut and Sidney Hunt were both out of New York, on the staff of the Natural History Museum. George was an ethnologist who specialized in what could be reconstructed about the prehistoric Indians of... more...