Fiction Books

The royal yacht had anchored amid a thunder of cannon, and the king had gone ashore. The city was bright with bunting; a thousand whistles blew. Up through the festooned streets His Majesty was escorted between long rows of blue-coated officers, behind which the eager crowds were massed for mile upon mile. Thin wire cables were stretched along the curbs, to hold the people back, but these threatened to... more...

CHAPTER I "Hi hum," observed Mr. Joel Macomber, putting down his knife and fork with obvious reluctance and tilting back his chair. "Hi hum-a-day! Man, born of woman, is of few days and full of—of somethin', I forget what—George, what is it a man born of woman is full of?" George Kent, putting down his knife and fork, smiled and replied that he didn't know. Mr. Macomber... more...

CHAPTER I. THE EAGLES AT HOME. "After all, fellows, it's good to be back home again." The speaker, Rob Blake, leader of the Eagle Patrol of Boy Scouts, spoke with conviction. He was a "rangy," sun-burned lad of about eighteen, clear-eyed, confident and wiry. His Boy Scout training, too, had made him resourceful beyond his years. "Yes, and it's also good to know that we... more...

Chapter I. Scotland. Bright was the summer of 1296. The war which had desolated Scotland was then at an end. Ambition seemed satiated; and the vanquished, after having passed under the yoke of their enemy, concluded they might wear their chains in peace. Such were the hopes of those Scottish noblemen who, early in the preceding spring, had signed the bond of submission to a ruthless conqueror,... more...

I.On the cold and dark Atlantic,The night was growing lateSteamed the maiden ship TitanicCrowded with human freightShe was valued at Ten Million,The grandest ever roamed the seas,Fitted complete to swim the oceanWhen the rolling billows freeze.She bade farewell to EnglandAll dressed in robes of whiteGoing out to plow the briny deep,And was on her western flight;She was now so swiftly glidingIn L Fifty... more...

CHAPTER I A RASH PROMISE He didn't want to go. He loathed the very thought of it. Every flinching nerve in him protested. A masked ball—a masked ball at a Cairo hotel! Grimacing through peep-holes, self-conscious advances, flirtations ending in giggles! Tourists as nuns, tourists as Turks, tourists as God-knows-what, all preening and peacocking! Unhappily he gazed upon the girl who was proposing... more...

Dr. Ludwig Thoma, perhaps better known to his Bavarian countrymen as Peter Schlemiehl, was born in Oberammergau on January 21, 1867. After graduating from a gymnasium in Munich, he studied at the School of Forestry at Aschauffenburg. He did not finish his course there, but entered the University at Munich and received his degree as Doctor Juris in 1893. A year later Dr. Thoma began to practice law; but... more...

CHAPTER I.THE MAN WITH THE BANNER. The history of Edward Arundel, second son of Christopher Arundel Dangerfield Arundel, of Dangerfield Park, Devonshire, began on a certain dark winter's night upon which the lad, still a schoolboy, went with his cousin, Martin Mostyn, to witness a blank–verse tragedy at one of the London theatres. There are few men who, looking back at the long story of their... more...

HER WEIGHT IN GOLD "Well the question is: how much does she weigh?" asked Eddie Ten Eyck with satirical good humour. His somewhat flippant inquiry followed the heated remark of General Horatio Gamble, who, in desperation, had declared that his step- daughter, Martha, was worth her weight in gold. The General was quite a figure in the town of Essex. He was the president of the Town and Country... more...

LIFE OF JOSEPH ADDISON. Joseph Addison, the Spectator, the true founder of our periodical literature, the finest, if not the greatest writer in the English language, was born at Milston, Wiltshire, on the 1st of May 1672. A fanciful mind might trace a correspondence between the particular months when celebrated men have been born and the peculiar complexion of their genius. Milton, the austere and... more...