Fiction Books

Kind Patrons:—-We newspaper carriers are Time's errand-boys; and all the year round, the old gentleman sends us from one of your doors to another, to let you know what he is talking about and what he is doing. We are a strange set of urchins; for, punctually on New Year's morning, one and all of us are seized with a fit of rhyme, and break forth in such hideous strains, that it would be... more...

On the twenty-fourth of January we left Nohcacab. It was a great relief to bid farewell to this place, and the only regret attending our departure was the reflection that we should be obliged to return. The kindness and attentions of the padrecito and his brother, and, indeed, of all the villagers, had been unremitted, but the fatigue of riding twelve miles every day over the same ground, and the... more...

CHAPTER I. THE POOR MAN'S CHILD. Two worn travellers, a young man and a fair girl about four years old, sat on the towing-path by the side of the Trent. The young man had his coat off, by which you might infer it was very hot; but no, it was a keen October day, and an east wind sweeping down the river. The coat was wrapped tightly round the little girl, so that only her fair face with blue eyes... more...

I. “ENGLAND.”IN THE CAMP. This is a leader’s tent.  “Who gathers here?”   Enter and see and listen.  On the groundMen sit or stand, enter or disappear,   Dark faces and deep voices all around. One answers you.  “You ask who gathers here?   Companions!  Generals we have none, nor chief.What need is there?  The plan is all so clear—  The future’s hope, the present’s grim... more...

An Empty Room The house where the long trail started was one of gray walls, gray rooms and gray corridors, with carpets that muffled the feet which at intervals passed along them. It was a house of silence, brooding within the high fence that shut it and the grounds from a landscape torpid under the hot sun of summer, and across which occasionally drifted the lonely, mournful whistle of a train on a... more...

ADVERTISEMENT. It having been frequently stated in print that the book called “Lavengro” was got up expressly against the popish agitation, in the years 1850-51, the author takes this opportunity of saying that the principal part of that book was written in the year ’43, that the whole of it was completed before the termination of the year ’46, and that it was in the hands of the publisher in... more...

It is fully fifteen, if not twenty, years since my father commenced the composition of an historical romance on the subject of Pausanias, the Spartan Regent. Circumstances, which need not here be recorded, compelled him to lay aside the work thus begun. But the subject continued to haunt his imagination and occupy his thoughts. He detected in it singular opportunities for effective exercise of the... more...

THE FROST-KING:OR,THE POWER OF LOVE. THREE little Fairies sat in the fields eating their breakfast; each among the leaves of her favorite flower, Daisy, Primrose, and Violet, were happy as Elves need be. The morning wind gently rocked them to and fro, and the sun shone warmly down upon the dewy grass, where butterflies spread their gay wings, and bees with their deep voices sung among the flowers;... more...

PREFACE A neighbour of mine exclaimed, when I mentioned that I proposed making a small collection of the folk-lore legends of the tribe of blacks I knew so well living on this station, "But have the blacks any legends?"—thus showing that people may live in a country and yet know little of the aboriginal inhabitants; and though there are probably many who do know these particular legends, yet... more...

CHAPTER I. CLAUDIUS BOMBARNAC,       Special Correspondent,            “Twentieth Century.”                   Tiflis, Transcaucasia. Such is the address of the telegram I found on the 13th of May when I arrived at Tiflis. This is what the telegram said: “As the matters in hand will terminate on the 15th instant Claudius Bombarnac will repair to Uzun Ada, a... more...