Fiction Books

FOREWORDS. This Essay is an expansion, in accordance with a preconceived scheme, of two papers, one on "The Witches in Macbeth," and the other on "The Demonology of Shakspere," which were read before the New Shakspere Society in the years 1877 and 1878. The Shakspere references in the text are made to the Globe Edition. The writer's best thanks are due to his friends Mr. F.J.... more...

I am unwilling to send out this Harrison, the friend of some twenty years’ standing, without a few words of introduction to those readers who don’t know it. The book is full of interest, not only to every Shakspere student, but to every reader of English history, every man who has the least care for his forefathers’ lives. Though it does contain sheets of padding now and then, yet the writer’s... more...

CHAPTER I ENGLAND'S FIRST LOOK In the early spring of 1476 the Italian Giovanni Caboto, who, like Christopher Columbus, was a seafaring citizen of Genoa, transferred his allegiance to Venice. The Roman Empire had fallen a thousand years before. Rome now held temporal sway only over the States of the Church, which were weak in armed force, even when compared with the small republics, dukedoms, and... more...

CHAPTER ONE POLATKIN & SCHEIKOWITZ CONSERVE THE HONOUR OF THEIR FAMILIES "NU, PHILIP," cried Marcus Polatkin to his partner, Philip Scheikowitz, as they sat in the showroom of their place of business one June morning, "even if the letter does got bad news in it you shouldn't take on so hard. When a feller is making good over here and the Leute im Russland hears about it, understand... more...

THE STRANGER. That portion of territory known throughout Christendom as Kentucky, was, at an early period, the theatre of some of the wildest, most hardily contested, and bloody scenes ever placed on record. In fact its very name, derived from the Indian word Kan-tuck-kee, which was applied to it long before its discovery by the whites, is peculiarly significant in meaning—being no less than "the... more...

INTRODUCTION.    "From each carved nook, and fretted bend,   Cornice and gallery, seem to send   Tones that with Seraph hymns might blend.    "Three solemn parts together twine,   In Harmony's mysterious line,   Three solemn aisles approach the shrine.    "Yet all are one, together all,   With thoughts that awe but not appal,   Teach the adoring heart to... more...

ELLEN OF VILLENSKOV. There lies a wold in Vester Haf,   There builds a boor his hold;And thither he carries hawk and hound,   He’ll stay through winter’s cold. He takes with him both hound and cock,   He means there long to stay;The wild deer in the wood that are   For his arrival pay. He hews the oak and poplar tall,   He fells the good beech tree;Then fill’d was the laidly Trold with... more...

CHAPTER I. FLEMING'S HOTEL. In the year 1785, as, also, prior and subsequent to that time, there was a hotel situated in one of the less frequented streets of Pittsburg, then the largest town west of the mountains, and kept by one Fleming, whence it derived the name of "Fleming's Hotel." This house, a small one, and indifferently furnished, was a favorite resort of the Indians who... more...

CHAPTER I Mrs. Bennet, her travelling companion from San Francisco, having proved to be talkative and uninteresting, Elsie Marley was more than content to find herself alone after the change had been made and her train pulled out of Chicago. It was characteristic of the girl that she did not even look out of the window to see the last of Mrs. Bennet, who, having waited on the platform until the train... more...

CHAPTER I. THE BRAHMIN CASTE OF NEW ENGLAND. There is nothing in New England corresponding at all to the feudal aristocracies of the Old World. Whether it be owing to the stock from which we were derived, or to the practical working of our institutions, or to the abrogation of the technical "law of honor," which draws a sharp line between the personally responsible class of "gentlemen"... more...