Fiction Books

CHAPTER I RAW MATERIAL Summer, intolerable summer, was upon the city at last. The families of its richest citizens had fled. Even at that early day some braved the long railroad journey to the Atlantic coast. Amongst these were our friends the Cluymes, who come not strongly into this history. Some went to the Virginia Springs. But many, like the Brinsmades and the Russells, the Tiptons and the... more...

Next day Annele seemed quite satisfied again with Franzl—she was such a capital servant, and Annele said: "I have not yet given you any thing, Franzl; do you prefer a gown or money?" "I should like money best." "There are two crown dollars for you." Lenz was very much pleased when Franzl told him this—she is a spoiled, hasty, dear, good child, thought he—and Franzl's... more...

PROLOGUE The Affair of the Man Who Vanished Mr. Maverick Narkom, Superintendent at Scotland Yard, flung aside the paper he was reading and wheeled round in his revolving desk-chair, all alert on the instant, like a terrier that scents a rat. He knew well what the coming of the footsteps toward his private office portended; his messenger was returning at last. Good! Now he would get at the facts of the... more...

PAUL BOURGET Born in Amiens, September 2, 1852, Paul Bourget was a pupil at the Lycee Louis le Grand, and then followed a course at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes, intending to devote himself to Greek philology. He, however, soon gave up linguistics for poetry, literary criticism, and fiction. When yet a very young man, he became a contributor to various journals and reviews, among others to the... more...

BY PROXY It will be recalled without effort—possibly, indeed, without interest—that the obsequies of the old Senator Boligand were a distinguished success: a fashionable, proper function, ordered by the young widow with exquisite taste, as all the world said, and conducted without reproach, as the undertaker and the clergy very heartily agreed. At the Church of the Lifted Cross, the incident of the... more...

She awoke, and didn't even wonder where she was. First there were feelings—a feeling of existence, a sense of still being alive when she should be dead, an awareness of pain that made her body its playground. After that, there came a thought. It was a simple thought, and her mind blurted it out before she could stop it: Oh, God, now I won't even be plain any more. I'll be ugly. The... more...

Chapter One. The Dwellers at Selwick Hall. “He would be on the mountain’s top, without the toil and travail of the climbing.”—Tupper. Selwick Hall, Lake Derwentwater, October ye first, Mdlxxix. It came about, as I have oft noted things to do, after a metely deal of talk, yet right suddenly in the end. Aunt Joyce, Milly, Edith, and I, were in the long gallery. We had been talking a while... more...

OUR HERO DEPARTS FROM VIENNA, AND QUITS THE DOMAIN OF VENUS FOR THE ROUGH FIELD OF MARS. Luckily for our adventurer, before she adhered to this determination, the young Count de Melvil was summoned to Presburg by his father, who desired to see him, before he should take the field, in consequence of a rupture between the Emperor and the French King; and Fathom of course quitted Vienna, in order to... more...

CHAPTER I I AM BORN The sun was slowly setting in the west, casting golden beams of light into the somber old room. That's the way it ought to begin, I know, and I'd like to do it, but I can't. I'm beginning with my being born, of course, and Nurse Sarah says the sun wasn't shining at all. It was night and the stars were out. She remembers particularly about the stars, for... more...

SERVIA AND THE "SERVIAN QUESTION." The principality of Servia was, a few years since, scarcely known to the English public except as an obscure province of the Ottoman empire, into which few travellers had penetrated; and of the population, internal resources, &c., of which, little information existed, and little curiosity was felt. But the singular political drama of which it has lately... more...