Fiction Books

CHAPTER I Peter was still poring over his ledger one dark afternoon in December, his bald head glistening like a huge ostrich egg under the flare of the overhead gas jets, when Patrick, the night watchman, catching sight of my face peering through the outer grating, opened the door of the Bank. The sight so late in the day was an unusual one, for in all the years that I have called at the Bank—ten,... more...

Chapter I Cross-RoadsIT was late November and a little snow had fallen. Three boys were on their way down Park Avenue to school—the Regal High. One of the boys, Frank Mulvy, carried his lunch in his pocket. He did not live far away, but his mother was to be out for the day and had put up a lunch for him. As the boys came down the avenue, an old man whom they had never seen before, met them. He asked... more...

The life of a female prisoner! It is so uniformly dull that I fear to weary you, friends, in repeating its history; while for me, even now, outside of some few days only too memorable, the twenty-seven months spent in the fortress are like a great hole, empty and badly lighted, at the bottom of which sometimes passed human shadows and some few phantasmagorical scenes. In these scattered remembrances,... more...

The Introduction When Marshall's discovery caused a sudden influx of thousands of adventurers from all classes and almost all countries, the conditions of government in California were almost the worst possible. Though the Mexican system was unpopular and the Mexican law practically unknown, until other provision was made by congress, they had to continue in force. But the free and slave states... more...

THE Hermit lived in a cave in the hollow of a hill. Below him was a glen, with a stream in a coppice of oaks and alders, and on the farther side of the valley, half a day's journey distant, another hill, steep and bristling, which raised aloft a little walled town with Ghibelline swallow-tails notched against the sky. When the Hermit was a lad, and lived in the town, the crenellations of the walls... more...

Between two and three years ago, the following pithy advertisement appeared in several of the London papers:— "Country Lodgings.—Apartments to let in a large farm-house,situate in a cheap and pleasant village, about forty milesfrom London. Apply (if by letter post-paid) to A. B., No. 7,Salisbury-street, Strand." Little did I think, whilst admiring in the broad page of the Morning Chronicle... more...

THE INGENIOUS STUDENT. There was once a student in Tuy who was so very poor that, if faith in Providence be not reckoned, he possessed no riches. But Juan Rivas was endowed with a wonderfully fine gift of ingenuity, and although he was somewhat behind in the payment for the Masses on behalf of his predecessors, and even more so with his mundane creditors, still was he a man who meant well and would do... more...

PREFACE There are two ways in which the French Revolution may be considered. We may look at the great events which astonished and horrified Europe and America: the storming of the Bastille, the march on Versailles, the massacres of September, the Terror, and the restoration of order by Napoleon. The study of these events must always be both interesting and profitable, and we cannot wonder that... more...

CHAPTER I. BESIDE STILL WATERS. The youth in the multi-coloured blazer laughed. “You’d have to come and be a nurse,” he suggested. “Oh, I’d go as a drummer-boy. I’d look fine in uniform, wouldn’t I?” the waitress simpered in return. Dennis Burnham swallowed his liqueur in one savage gulp, pushed back his chair, and rose from the table. “Silly young ass,” he said, in a voice loud... more...

"Effie! What the devil are you up to?" Her husband's voice, chopping through her mood of terrified rapture, made her heart jump like a startled cat, yet by some miracle of feminine self-control her body did not show a tremor. Dear God, she thought, he mustn't see it. It's so beautiful, and he always kills beauty. "I'm just looking at the Moon," she said listlessly.... more...