Fiction Books

I Like a man who reenters a closed and darkened house and lies down; lying there, remains conscious of sunlight outside, of bird-calls, and the breeze in the trees, so had Drene entered into the obscurity of himself. Through the chambers of his brain the twilit corridors where cringed his bruised and disfigured soul, there nothing stirring except the automatic pulses which never cease. Sometimes, when... more...

No new edition of Bulfinch's classic work can be considered complete without some notice of the American scholar to whose wide erudition and painstaking care it stands as a perpetual monument. "The Age of Fable" has come to be ranked with older books like "Pilgrim's Progress," "Gulliver's Travels," "The Arabian Nights," "Robinson Crusoe," and five... more...

FOREWORD For many years lovers of the republic have been warning our people as to the perils of modern city life. In 1800 one person out of thirteen lived in the city; to-day nearly every other citizen lives in a large town, or a great city. The city is the home of wealth, commerce, and finance; the home of music, art, and eloquence. Once each year all the great leaders come for a stay, long or short,... more...

Take half a pound of pure dry nitrate, in powder; put it into a retort that is quite dry; add an equal quantity of highly rectified oil of vitriol, and, distilling the mixture in a moderate sand heat, it will produce a liquor like a yellowish fume; this, when caught in a dry receiver, is Glauber's Spirits of Nitre; probably the preparation, under that name, may be obtained of the chemists, which... more...

Chapter i. In which the history looks backwards. Before we proceed farther with our history it may be proper to look back a little, in order to account for the late conduct of Doctor Harrison; which, however inconsistent it may have hitherto appeared, when examined to the bottom will be found, I apprehend, to be truly congruous with all the rules of the most perfect prudence as well as with the most... more...

I When Hugh Seymour was nine years of age he was sent from Ceylon, where his parents lived, to be educated in England. His relations having, for the most part, settled in foreign countries, he spent his holidays as a very minute and pale-faced "paying guest" in various houses where other children were of more importance than he, or where children as a race were of no importance at all. It was... more...

FOREWORD. Between the far away past history of the world, and that which lies near to us; in the time when the wisdom of the ancient times was dead and had passed away, and our own days of light had not yet come, there lay a great black gulf in human history, a gulf of ignorance, of superstition, of cruelty, and of wickedness. That time we call the dark or middle ages. Few records remain to us of that... more...

CHAPTER I.  Three Editors Let the reader be introduced to Lady Carbury, upon whose character and doings much will depend of whatever interest these pages may have, as she sits at her writing-table in her own room in her own house in Welbeck Street.  Lady Carbury spent many hours at her desk, and wrote many letters,—wrote also very much beside letters.  She spoke of herself in these days as a woman... more...

INTRODUCTION The seven volumes of the first edition of Clarissa were published in three instalments during the twelve months from December 1747 to December 1748. Richardson wrote a Preface for Volume I and a Postscript for Volume VII, and William Warburton supplied an additional Preface for Volume III (or IV).A second edition, consisting merely of a reprint of Volumes I-IV was brought out in 1749. In... more...

TO THE MEMORY OF A BELOVED SON WHO PASSED FROM EARTH, APRIL 3rd, 1887. I would gaze down the vista of past years,In fancy see to-night,A loved one passed from sight,But whose blest memory my spirit cheers. Shrined in the sacred temple of my soul,He seems again to live,And fond affection give,His mother's heart comfort and console. Perception of the beautiful and bright,In nature and in art,Evolved... more...