Fiction Books

Introduction Love of country is a sentiment so universal that it is only on such rare occasions as called this book into being that there is any need of discussing it or justifying it. There is a perfectly absurd statement by Charles Kingsley, in the preface to one of his books, written fifty years ago, in which he says that, while there can be loyalty to a king or a queen, there cannot be loyalty to... more...

PRESERVED MEATS AND MEAT-BISCUITS.   The many-headed public look out for 'nine days' wonders,' and speedily allow one wonder to obliterate the remembrance of that which preceded it. So it is with all newspaper topics, and so it has been in respect to the preserved-meat question. We all know how great was the excitement at the commencement of the present year on this matter. Ships'... more...

I—GOBO STRIKES One day—it was about a week after Allan Quatermain told me his story of the "Three Lions," and of the moving death of Jim-Jim—he and I were walking home together on the termination of a day's shooting. He owned about two thousand acres of shooting round the place he had bought in Yorkshire, over a hundred of which were wood. It was the second year of his occupation of... more...

Chapter I The Disappearance It was the fifth of August. Warsaw the brilliant, Warsaw the Beautiful, the best beloved of her adoring people, had fallen. Torn by bombs, wrecked by great shells, devastated by hordes of alien invaders, she lay in ruins. Her people, despairing, seemed for the greater part to have vanished in the two days since the fatal third of August when the city was taken. Many of the... more...

THE GRAY CHAMPION. There was once a time when New England groaned under the actual pressure of heavier wrongs than those threatened ones which brought on the Revolution. James II., the bigoted successor of Charles the Voluptuous, had annulled the charters of all the colonies and sent a harsh and unprincipled soldier to take away our liberties and endanger our religion. The administration of Sir Edmund... more...

My great-great-great-uncle was one of the many sturdy, honest, high-spirited men to whom the early years of the last century gave birth. He was a brave man and a ready fighter, yet was he ever controlled in his actions by so nice a regard for the feelings of others, and through the strong fibre of his hardy nature ran a strain of such almost womanly gentleness and tenderness, that throughout the rather... more...

I. SERMON AT THE OPENING SERVICES OF THE GENERAL CONVENTION, OCTOBER 2, 1889. "We have heard with our ears, O God, our fathers have told us, what work Thou didst their days, in the times of old."—PSALM xliv. I. Brethren: I shall take it for granted that there is a visible Church; that it was founded by Our Lord Jesus Christ, and has His promise that the gates of hell shall never prevail... more...

CHAPTER I. Volcanoes in general—Origin of the Name—General Aspect—Crater—Cone—Subordinate Cones and Craters—Peak of Teneriffe—Lava-Streams—Cascades and Jets of Lava—Variations in its Consistency—Pumice—Different Sorts of Lava—Obsidian—Olivine—Sulphur—Dust,Ashes, &c.—Volcanic Silk—Volcanic Islands—Volcanic Fishes—HotWater, Mud, Vapours, &c—Volcanic... more...

Yesterday morning this thing happened to me: I was reading the New York Times and my eyes suddenly fell upon one word, and that word rang a little bell in my memory, “Kirkwall!” The next moment I had closed my eyes in order to see backward more clearly, and slowly, but surely, the old, old town––standing boldly upon the very beach of the stormy North Sea––became clear in my mental vision.... more...

CONFERENCE I THE PRIESTLY VOCATION IT is well known that one of the great aims of Cardinal Manning during his long episcopate, and perhaps the one of his works which has left the most permanent impression behind it, was to raise the tone and status of his diocesan clergy. For many reasons connected with our Catholic history, the level at which the average secular priest in the days of the Vicariates... more...