Fiction Books

The mantle of evening is veiling the sky,And over the landscape its soft shadows lie;The old year is passing, a new year will reign,Ere earth shall awaken to day-dawn again. Dear Grandma has folded her knitting away,And muses alone at the close of the day;While the old clock ticks solemnly off, one by one,The moments yet left to the year almost done. Out from the shadows fast filling the room,Out from... more...

PREFACE. Abraham Lincoln has become the typical character of American institutions, and it is the purpose of this book, which is a true picture in a framework of fiction, to show how that character, which so commanded the hearts and the confidence of men, was formed. He who in youth unselfishly seeks the good of others, without fear or favor, may be ridiculed, but he makes for himself a character fit... more...

ACT THE FIRST. Scene I.—A Room in the house of Polemius at Rome. Chrysanthus is seen seated near a writing table on which are several books: he is reading a small volume with deep attention. Chrysanthus. Ah! how shallow is my mind!How confined! and how restricted!Ah! how driftless are my words!And my thoughts themselves how driftless!Since I cannot comprehend,Cannot pierce the secrets hiddenIn this... more...

CHAPTER I. Ursula and Gudrun Brangwen sat one morning in the window-bay of their father's house in Beldover, working and talking. Ursula was stitching a piece of brightly-coloured embroidery, and Gudrun was drawing upon a board which she held on her knee. They were mostly silent, talking as their thoughts strayed through their minds. 'Ursula,' said Gudrun, 'don't you REALLY... more...

JACK AND FRED. You should have seen those youths, for it gives me pleasure to say that two manlier, more plucky and upright boys it would be hard to find anywhere in this broad land of ours. I have set out to tell you about their remarkable adventures in the grandest section of the West, and, before doing so, it is necessary for you to know something concerning the lads themselves. Jack Dudley was in... more...

PART I HISTORICAL CHAPTER I THE DEPARTURE 1493 Eight centuries of a gigantic struggle for supremacy between the Crescent and the Cross had devastated the fairest provinces of the Spanish Peninsula. Boabdil, the last of the Moorish kings, had delivered the keys of Granada into the hands of Queen Isabel, the proud banner of the united kingdoms of Castile and Aragon floated triumphant from the walls of... more...

Chapter One. The Squatter’s Clearing. The white-headed eagle, soaring above the spray of a Tennessean forest, looks down upon the clearing of the squatter. To the eye of the bird it is alone visible; and though but a spot in the midst of that immense green sea, it is conspicuous by the colour of the trees that stand over it. They stand, but grow not: the girdling ring around their stems has deprived... more...

Chapter I. It is impossible that the stupendous events which followed the disastrous invasion of the earth by the Martians should go without record, and circumstances having placed the facts at my disposal, I deem it a duty, both to posterity and to those who were witnesses of and participants in the avenging counterstroke that the earth dealt back at its ruthless enemy in the heavens, to write down... more...

DELIVERED INTO BONDAGE Sarah Newbolt enjoyed in her saturnine, brooding way the warmth of April sunshine and the stirring greenery of awakening life now beginning to soften the brown austerity of the dead winter earth. Beside her kitchen wall the pink cones of rhubarb were showing, and the fat buds of the lilacs, which clustered coppicelike in her dooryard, were ready to unlock and flare forth leaves.... more...

Perognathus goldmani Osgood and Perognathus artus Osgood from southern Sonora, northern Sinaloa and adjoining parts of Chihuahua and Durango, are two named kinds of the Perognathus intermedius group of pocket mice, of the subgenus Chaetodipus. Until now the two kinds have been treated in the literature as two species. In both goldmani and artus the upper parts are Ochraceous-Buff (capitalized color... more...