Fiction Books

CHAPTER I. ANDREW HOWLAND belonged to that class of rigid moralists who can tolerate in others no wanderings from the right way. His children were forced into the straight jacket of external consistency from their earliest infancy; and if they deviated from the right line in which they were required to walk, punishment was sure to follow. A child loves his parent naturally. The latter may be harsh, and... more...

"YIM" Dar ban a little faller,  Ay tenk his name ban Yim,And nearly every morning  Ay used to seeing him.He used to stand in gatevay,  And call me Svede, and ayAnt lak to hear dis nickname:  Ay ban a Norsk, yu say. But he ban little faller,  Ay tenk 'bout sax years old,And so ay used to lak him—  He ban too small to scold.Ay used to say, "Val, Yimmie,  Ay ant ban Svede,... more...

Jackson kept his promise to write to Westover, but he was better than his word to his mother, and wrote to her every week that winter. "I seem just to live from letter to letter. It's ridic'lous," she said to Cynthia once when the girl brought the mail in from the barn, where the men folks kept it till they had put away their horses after driving over from Lovewell with it. The trains... more...

Definition of Etching.—To be able to get an impression on paper from a metal plate in a copper-plate printing-press, it is necessary to sink the lines of the design below the surface of the plate, so that each line is represented by a furrow. The plate is then inked all over, care being taken to fill each furrow, and finally the ink is cautiously wiped away from the surface, while the furrows are... more...

Hunting.Certes it is a noble sportAnd men have quitted selle and swum for't,But I am of a meeker sortAnd I prefer Surtees in comfort.Reach down my "Handley Cross" again.My run, where never danger lurks, isWith Jorrocks and his deathless trainPigg, Binjimin and Arterxerxes! January. Most men harry the world for fun—Each man seeks it a different wayBut "of all daft devils under the... more...

THE STRENGTHOF GIDEON THE STRENGTH OF GIDEON Old Mam' Henry, and her word may be taken, said that it was "De powerfulles' sehmont she ever had hyeahd in all huh bo'n days." That was saying a good deal, for the old woman had lived many years on the Stone place and had heard many sermons from preachers, white and black. She was a judge, too. It really must have been a powerful... more...

"Na, na; I hae nae feelin's, I'm thankfu' to say. I never kent ony guid come o' them. They're a terrible sicht i' the gait." "Naebody ever thoucht o' layin' 't to yer chairge, mem." "'Deed, I aye had eneuch adu to du the thing I had to du, no to say the thing 'at naebody wad du but mysel'. I hae had nae leisur' for... more...

I. A Change of Lodging The glass-domed "palm-room" of the Grand Continental Hotel Magnifique in Rome is of vasty heights and distances, filled with a mellow green light which filters down languidly through the upper foliage of tall palms, so that the two hundred people who may be refreshing or displaying themselves there at the tea-hour have something the look of under-water creatures playing... more...

THE EARRING. "Come oot o' the gutter, ye nickum!" cried, in harsh, half-masculine voice, a woman standing on the curbstone of a short, narrow, dirty lane, at right angles to an important thoroughfare, itself none of the widest or cleanest. She was dressed in dark petticoat and print wrapper. One of her shoes was down at the heel, and discovered a great hole in her stocking. Had her black... more...

The sun was blazing down upon a city on the western shore of the Caspian. It was a primitive city, and yet its size and population rendered it worthy of the term. It consisted of a vast aggregation of buildings, which were for the most part mere huts. Among them rose, however, a few of more solid build and of higher pretensions. These were the abodes of the chiefs and great men, the temples, and places... more...