Fiction Books

A GOLDEN VENTURE The elders of the Tidger family sat at breakfast—Mrs. Tidger with knees wide apart and the youngest Tidger nestling in the valley of print-dress which lay between, and Mr. Tidger bearing on one moleskin knee a small copy of himself in a red flannel frock and a slipper. The larger Tidger children took the solids of their breakfast up and down the stone-flagged court outside, coming in... more...

Chapter One. The last Night in the Old Home. “Which speaks the truth - fair Hope or ghastly Fear?        God knoweth, and not I.Only, o’er both, Love holds her torch aloft,        And will, until I die.” “Fiddle-de-dee! Do give over snuffing and snivelling and sobbing, and tell me if you want your warm petticoat in the saddle-bag. You’d make a saint for... more...

radley Broadshoulders—friends called him "Brad", or "Broad", or "Shoulders"—stood grim-lipped, as is the custom of spacemen, and waited for the Commander to speak fateful words. He was an obese youth, fully five feet tall, without a shred of muscle, but he wore the green tunic of the Galaxy Patrol proudly, and his handsome, bony head boasted a tidy crop of Venusian fungus.... more...

"A LAUNG KHIT." Once upon a time there was a woman who lived in the State of Lai Hka. She was a very pious woman and always gave the best rice and puc to the priests as they walked, rice chattie in hand, through the city in the early morning. Every year when the girls and boys went to the river and filled their chatties with water to throw over the pagodas and idols to insure a good rainy... more...

A pine forest is nature's expression of solemnity and solitude. Sunlight, rivers, cascades, people, music, laughter, or dancing could not make it gay. With its unceasing reverberations and its eternal shadows, it is as awful and as holy as a cathedral. Thirty good fellows working together by day and drinking together by night can keep up but a moody imitation of jollity. Spend twenty-five of your... more...

  APHRODITEGreat among men, and not unnamed am I,The Cyprian, in God's inmost halls on high.And wheresoe'er from Pontus to the farRed West men dwell, and see the glad day-star,And worship Me, the pious heart I bless,And wreck that life that lives in stubbornness.For that there is, even in a great God's mind,That hungereth for the praise of human kind. So runs my word; and soon the very... more...

Louise, self-engrossed, and with a pleasant sense of detachment from the prospective inconveniences of the moment, was leaning back among the cushions of the motionless car. Her eyes, lifted upward, traveled past the dimly lit hillside, with its patchwork of wall-enclosed fields, up to where the leaning clouds and the unseen heights met in a misty sea of obscurity. The moon had not yet risen, but a... more...

Lenville! Bert Redmond had never heard of the place until he received Joan's letter. But here it was, a tiny straggling village cuddled amongst the Ramapo hills of lower New York State, only a few miles from Tuxedo. There was a prim, white-painted church, a general store with the inevitable gasoline pump at the curb, and a dozen or so of weatherbeaten frame houses. That was all. It was a typical,... more...

Chapter I His Inheritance It was winter--cold and snow and ice and naked trees and leaden clouds and stinging wind. The house was an ancient mansion on an old street in that city of culture which has given to the history of our nation--to education, to religion, to the sciences, and to the arts--so many illustrious names. In the changing years, before the beginning of my story, the woman's... more...

CHAPTER I. HOW I FIRST HEARD OF THE MAID. "The age of Chivalry--alas!--is dead. The days of miracles are past and gone! What future is there for hapless France? She lies in the dust. How can she hope to rise?" Sir Guy de Laval looked full in our faces as he spoke these words, and what could one reply? Ah me!--those were sad and sorrowful days for France--and for those who thought upon the... more...