Fiction Books

CHAPTER I. THE DETECTIVE AND THE BANKER—A REMARKABLE NARRATIVE—A PECULIAR TRAIL—MILLIONS WITH NO OWNER—A GREAT TASK LOOMING UP FOR JACK—A MOMENT OF EXPECTANCY. "Your name is John Alvarez?" "That is my name, sir." An elderly man was seated at a table and a young man stood opposite to him. The elderly person was a well-known banker who had retired from business, and he had sent... more...

CHAPTER I Death leapt upon the Rev. Charles Cardinal, Rector of St. Dreots in South Glebeshire, at the moment that he bent down towards the second long drawer of his washhand-stand; he bent down to find a clean collar. It is in its way a symbol of his whole life, that death claimed him before he could find one. At one moment his mind was intent upon his collar; at the next he was stricken with a wild... more...

THE GREEK SLAVE AND THE LITTLE ROMAN BOY Ariston, the Greek slave, was busily painting. He stood in a little room with three smooth walls. The fourth side was open upon a court. A little fountain splashed there. Above stretched the brilliant sky of Italy. The August sun shone hotly down. It cut sharp shadows of the columns on the cement floor. This was the master's room. The artist was painting... more...

THE MAGIC WINGSONE morning as little Puss, Junior, on his Good Gray Horse rode through Mother Goose country he saw a spider sitting in her tiny lace house. She kept very still, for the early dewdrops still clung to the delicate web. And as the sun shone down they looked for all the world like diamonds on a piece of lace. So little Puss, Junior, stretched out his paw and, would you believe it, instead... more...

PROEM. Mendelssohn's "Elijah." [Illustration: (musical notation); lyrics: He, watch-ing o-ver Is—ra—el, slumbers not, nor sleeps.] From the high Cathedral tower the solemn assurance floated forth to be a warning, or a promise, according to the mental state of those whose ears it filled; and the mind, familiar with the phrase, continued it involuntarily, carrying the running... more...

To Amos Jordan, Secretary for Cislunar Navigation, no situation was unsolvable. There were rules for everything, weren't there.... Except maybe this thing ... "What's the matter, anyway?" Amos Jordan snapped at his assistant. "Is everyone in the Senate losing their mind?" "No more than usual," said Clements, the undersecretary. "It's just a matter of... more...

CHAPTER I. Charming Billy Has a Visitor. The wind, rising again as the sun went down, mourned lonesomely at the northwest corner of the cabin, as if it felt the desolateness of the barren, icy hills and the black hollows between, and of the angry red sky with its purple shadows lowering over the unhappy land—and would make fickle friendship with some human thing. Charming Billy, hearing the crooning... more...

THE DUTCH SENSITIVISTS. In the intellectual history of all countries we find the same phenomenon incessantly recurring. New writers, new artists, new composers arise in revolt against what has delighted their grandfathers and satisfied their fathers. These young men, pressed together at first, by external opposition, into a serried phalanx, gradually win their way, become themselves the delight and... more...

"The dream of Pharaoh is one. The seven kine are seven years; and the seven good ears are seven years: the dream is one…. And for that the dream was doubled unto Pharaoh twice, it is because the thing is established."… In other words: Behind three or four subtitles and changes of time, scene, characters, this tale of strong hearts is one. And for that the tale is tripled or quadrupled unto... more...

CHAPTER I. "My meaning in't, I protest, was very honest in the behalf of themaid * * * * yet, who would have suspected an ambush where I wastaken?" All's Well that Ends Well, Act iv. Sc. 3. SOME four miles distant from one of our northern manufacturing towns, in the year 18—, was a wide and desolate common; a more dreary spot it is impossible to conceive—the herbage grew up in... more...