Fiction Books

CHAPTER I. MY FIRST SUPPER PARTY The devil take me if I can remember her name, notwithstanding I dearly loved her, the charming girl! It is strange how rich we find ourselves when we rummage in old drawers; how many forgotten sighs, how many pretty little trinkets, broken, old-fashioned, and dusty, we come across. But no matter. I was now eighteen, and, upon my honor, very unsuspecting. It was in the... more...

The German fast mail steamer, Roland, one of the older vessels of the North German Steamship Company, plying between Bremen and New York, left Bremen on the twenty-third of January, 1892. It had been built in English yards with none of those profuse, gorgeous gold decorations in a riotous rococo style which are so unpleasant in the saloons and cabins of ships more recently built in German yards. The... more...

CHAPTER I THE SUBTERRANEAN WAY The slanting rays of afternoon sunshine, pouring through stone arches, lay in broad, golden bands, upon the flags of the Convent cloister. The old lay-sister, Mary Antony, stepped from the cool shade of the cell passage and, blinking at the sunshine, shuffled slowly to her appointed post at the top of the crypt steps, up which would shortly pass the silent procession of... more...

THE CAN WITH THE DIAMOND NOTCH I [Illustration: Festus Clasby] The name stood out in chaste white letters from the black background of the signboard. Indeed the name might be said to spring from the landscape, for this shop jumped from its rural setting with an air of aggression. It was a commercial oasis on a desert of grass. It proclaimed the clash of two civilisations. There were the hills, pitched... more...

I. As Don Ippolito passed down the long narrow calle or footway leading from the Campo San Stefano to the Grand Canal in Venice, he peered anxiously about him: now turning for a backward look up the calle, where there was no living thing in sight but a cat on a garden gate; now running a quick eye along the palace walls that rose vast on either hand and notched the slender strip of blue sky visible... more...

CAPTAINS ALL Every sailorman grumbles about the sea, said the night-watchman, thoughtfully. It's human nature to grumble, and I s'pose they keep on grumbling and sticking to it because there ain't much else they can do. There's not many shore-going berths that a sailorman is fit for, and those that they are—such as a night-watchman's, for instance—wants such a good... more...

CHAPTER I AUNT LU ARRIVES "Bunny! Bunny! Wake up! It's time!" "Wha—what's matter?" sleepily mumbled little Bunny Brown, making his words all run together, like molasses candy that has been out in the hot sun. "What's the matter, Sue?" Bunny asked, now that he had his eyes open. He looked over the side of his small bed to see his sister standing beside it. She... more...

CHAPTER I HUSBANDS AND WIFE. Brock was breakfasting out-of-doors in the cheerful little garden of the Hôtel Chatham. The sun streamed warmly upon the concrete floor of the court just beyond the row of palms and oleanders that fringed the rail against which his Herald rested, that he might read as he ran, so to speak. He was the only person having déjeuner on the "terrace," as he named it to... more...

PRELUDE An Hour in the Life of Two Modern Young People April, 1909.Lounging idly in the deserted little waiting-room was the usual shabby, bored, lonely ticket-seller, prodigiously indifferent to the grave beauty of the scene before him and to the throng of ancient memories jostling him where he stood. Without troubling to look at his watch, he informed the two young foreigners that they had a long... more...

THE STORM. The Laughing Mary was a light ship, as sailors term a vessel that stands high upon the water, having discharged her cargo at Callao, from which port we were proceeding in ballast to Cape Town, South Africa, there to call for orders. Our run to within a few parallels of the latitude of the Horn had been extremely pleasant; the proverbial mildness of the Pacific Ocean was in the mellow... more...