Fiction Books

CHAPTER I LANCASTER GATE, LONDON, W "Do the beastly old map yourself, if you want it. I shan't, anyhow!" "Wilfred!" "Aw, Wil-fred!" The boy at the end of the schoolroom table, red-haired, snub-nosed and defiant, mimicked the protesting tone. "I've done it once, and I'm blessed if I do it again." "No one would dream that it was ever meant for... more...

APPENDIX I. It seems impossible to separate by any exact line the genuine writings of Plato from the spurious. The only external evidence to them which is of much value is that of Aristotle; for the Alexandrian catalogues of a century later include manifest forgeries. Even the value of the Aristotelian authority is a good deal impaired by the uncertainty concerning the date and authorship of the... more...

CHAPTER I It was late summer-time, and the perfume of flowers stole into the darkened room through the half-opened window. The sunlight forced its way through a chink in the blind, and stretched across the floor in strange zigzag fashion. From without came the pleasant murmur of bees and many lazier insects floating over the gorgeous flower beds, resting for a while on the clematis which had made the... more...

HENRY CLAY. The close of the war removes the period preceding it to a great distance from us, so that we can judge its public men as though we were the "posterity" to whom they sometimes appealed. James Buchanan still haunts the neighborhood of Lancaster, a living man, giving and receiving dinners, paying his taxes, and taking his accustomed exercise; but as an historical figure he is as... more...

Love is as strong as death; jealousy is cruel as the grave: the coals thereof are coals of fire, which hath a most vehement flame. There is nothing in the world nobler, and lovelier, and more absurd, than a boy's lovemaking. And the joyousness of it!... The boy of nineteen, Maurice Curtis, who on a certain June day lay in the blossoming grass at his wife's feet and looked up into her dark... more...

I go to sea in rather unromantic surroundings. Have any of you made a passage on board a steamer between London and Leith? If you have, you will have seen no small number of brigs and brigantines, with sails of all tints, from doubtful white to decided black—some deeply-laden, making their way to the southward, others with their sides high out of the water, heeling over to the slightest breeze,... more...

CHAPTER I. “First Fear his hand its skill to try,Amid the chords bewildered laid—And back recoiled, he knew not why,E’en at the sound himself had made.”— Little Helen sat in her long flannel night-dress, by the side of Miss Thusa, watching the rapid turning of her wheel, and the formation of the flaxen thread, as it glided out, a more and more attenuated filament, betwixt the dexterous... more...

CHAPTER I One day, in the November following William Wetherell's death, Jethro Bass astonished Coniston by moving to the little cottage in the village which stood beside the disused tannery, and which had been his father's. It was known as the tannery house. His reasons for this step, when at length discovered, were generally commended: they were, in fact, a disinclination to leave a girl of... more...

The Jackals and the Wolf. A pack of Jackals[FN#155] went out one day to seek food, and as they prowled about in quest of this, behold, they happened upon a dead camel and said in themselves, "Verily we have found wherewithal we may live a great while; but we fear lest one of us oppress the other and the strong bear down the weak with his strength and so the puny of us perish. Wherefore it behoveth... more...

CHAPTER I. THE POLAR SHIP. "Oh, it's southward ho, where the breezes blow; we're off for the pole, yo, ho! heave ho!" "Is that you, Harry?" asked a lad of about seventeen, without looking up from some curious-looking frames and apparatus over which he was working in the garage workshop back of his New York home on Madison Avenue. "Ay! ay! my hearty," responded his... more...