Fiction Books

CHAPTER I. Every one who knows Oxford, and a good many besides, must have heard of certain periodical migrations of the younger members of that learned university into distant and retired parts of her Majesty’s dominions, which (on the “lucus a non lucendo” principle) are called and known by the name of Reading Parties. Some half-dozen undergraduates, in peril of the coming examination, form... more...

INTRODUCTION. In several of the dialogues of Plato, doubts have arisen among his interpreters as to which of the various subjects discussed in them is the main thesis. The speakers have the freedom of conversation; no severe rules of art restrict them, and sometimes we are inclined to think, with one of the dramatis personae in the Theaetetus, that the digressions have the greater interest. Yet in the... more...

The minds of young people are now manufactured like webs of linen, all alike, and nothing left to nature. From the hour when children can speak, till they come to years of discretion or of indiscretion, they are carefully prompted what to say, and what to think, and what to look, and how to feel; while in most school-rooms nature has been turned out of doors with obloquy, and art has entirely... more...

CHAPTER I. Let me tell you a story of To-Day,—very homely and narrow in its scope and aim. Not of the To-Day whose significance in the history of humanity only those shall read who will live when you and I are dead. We can bear the pain in silence, if our hearts are strong enough, while the nations of the earth stand afar off. I have no word of this To-Day to speak. I write from the border of the... more...

CHAPTER I A MESSAGE FROM THE WOODFOLK Nimble-toes Field-mouse trotted briskly along the dark subway and up the steep attic stairway in Mr. Giant's house. He had travelled a long way from his woodland home and it was getting late. The door of the cosy attic where Cousin Graymouse lived was ajar. Nimble-toes paused to get his breath and peep in at the busy, happy family. Mother Graymouse sat in her... more...

PART I Four years ago—in 1874—two young Englishmen had occasion to go to the United States. They crossed the ocean at midsummer, and, arriving in New York on the first day of August, were much struck with the fervid temperature of that city. Disembarking upon the wharf, they climbed into one of those huge high-hung coaches which convey passengers to the hotels, and with a great deal of bouncing and... more...

A DAY OF SPLEEN. Five o'clock in the afternoon. Rain ever since the morning, a gray sky, so low that one can touch it with one's umbrella, dirty weather, puddles, mud, nothing but mud, in thick pools, in gleaming streaks along the edge of the sidewalks, driven back in vain by automatic sweepers, sweepers with handkerchiefs tied over their heads, and carted away on enormous tumbrils which... more...

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH.Birth.Infancy.Boyhood and Early Education.Youthful Traits of Character.William John Wills was born at Totnes, in Devonshire, on the 5th of January, 1834. He had, therefore, attained the full age of twenty-seven at the time of his death. Even in infancy, his countenance was interesting and expressive. He began to speak and walk alone before he had completed his first year. His lively... more...

CHAPTER I - YOUTH MARCHES "Look at 'em come, Jesse! More and more! Must be forty or fifty families." Molly Wingate, middle-aged, portly, dark browed and strong, stood at the door of the rude tent which for the time made her home. She was pointing down the road which lay like an écru ribbon thrown down across the prairie grass, bordered beyond by the timber-grown bluffs of the Missouri.... more...

DOUBLE DEALING Mr. Fred Carter stood on the spacious common, inhaling with all the joy of the holiday-making Londoner the salt smell of the sea below, and regarding with some interest the movements of a couple of men who had come to a stop a short distance away. As he looked they came on again, eying him closely as they approached—a strongly built, shambling man of fifty, and a younger man, evidently... more...