Fiction Books

CHAPTER I Mrs. Ogilvie, red-haired according to the exact shade then in fashion, and dressed by Paquin, sat in her drawing-room reading the Court Journal. She was a woman who thought on the lines of Aristotle, despised most other women except Charlotte Corday, Judith, Joan of Arc, and a few more, and she dyed her hair and read the Court Journal. People who did not know her sometimes alluded to her as... more...

INTRODUCTION"Over the carnage rose prophetic a voice,Be not dishearten'd, affection shall solve the problem of freedom yet.. . . . . . . . .(Were you looking to be held together by lawyers?Or by an agreement on a paper? or by arms?Nay, nor the world, nor any living thing, will so cohere.)"These lines of Walt Whitman will be recalled by many who read the following pages: for not only does... more...

Chap. I Of Ketill Flatnose and his Descendants, 9th Century A.D. Ketill Flatnose was the name of a man. He was the son of Bjorn the Ungartered. Ketill was a mighty and high-born chieftain (hersir) in Norway. He abode in Raumsdale, within the folkland of the Raumsdale people, which lies between Southmere and Northmere. Ketill Flatnose had for wife Yngvild, daughter of Ketill Wether, who was a man of... more...

The Welsh style themselves Cymry or Cumry, a word which, in their language, means a number of people associated together.   They were the second mass of population which moved from Asia into Europe.  They followed and pushed forward the Gael or Gauls; were themselves impelled onward by the Slowaks or Sclavonians, who were themselves hunted, goaded, and pestered by a wild, waspish race of people,... more...

THE RUSH IN 1900 he remarkable discoveries of gold at Cape Nome, Alaska, situated almost in the Bering Strait, only one hundred and fifty miles from Siberia, and distant not less than three thousand miles from San Francisco and fifteen hundred from the famed Klondike, naturally created more excitement in the Western and mining sections of this country than in the Middle States and the "effete... more...

1. EFFICIENCY OF LABOUR. Political economists have not overlooked efficiency of labour: they have underestimated its importance in the opinion of Edward Wilson, who has supplied me with the examples and arguments that follow and who has verbally given me leave to publish as much as I like. The English workman, especially in a country town of moderate size, regards capital as unlimited, employment... more...

now him? Yes, I know him—knew him. That was twenty years ago. Everybody knows him now. Everybody who passed him on the street knows him. Everybody who went to the same schools, or even to different schools in different towns, knows him now. Ask them. But I knew him. I lived three feet away from him for a month and a half. I shipped with him and called him by his first name. What was he like? What was... more...

“Can you use a Sword?” “Yes! What is it?” “Hist, boy! Jump up and dress.” “Oh, it’s you, father!” said the newly aroused sleeper, slipping out of bed—or, rather, off his bed, for the heat of an Eastern China night had made him dispense with bedclothes. He made a frantic dash at his trousers, feeling confused and strange in the darkness, and hardly... more...

A KNIGHT OF THE LEGION OF HONOR It was in the smoking-room of a Cunarder two days out. The evening had been spent in telling stories, the fresh-air passengers crowding the doorways to listen, the habitual loungers and card-players abandoning their books and games. When my turn came,—mine was a story of Venice, a story of the old palace of the Barbarozzi,—I noticed in one corner of the room a man... more...

CHAPTER I "Must I go, must I go,Away into the town?" (Swabian Folk-song.) Franz Vogt was on his way home. He carried a neatly tied-up parcel containing the under-linen and the boots that he had been buying in the town. He had trodden this same road a countless number of times during his life; but now that he must bid good-bye to it so soon, the old familiar surroundings presented themselves to... more...