Fiction Books

Chapter I. I was the second son of a farmer, whose place of residence was a western district of Pennsylvania. My eldest brother seemed fitted by nature for the employment to which he was destined. His wishes never led him astray from the hay-stack and the furrow. His ideas never ranged beyond the sphere of his vision, or suggested the possibility that to-morrow could differ from to-day. He could read... more...

CHAPTER I A WONDERFUL PLAN "Hello, Dolly," said Dotty Rose, over the telephone. "Hello, Dot," responded Dolly Fayre. "What you want?" "Oh! I can't tell you this way. Come on over, just as quick as you can." "But I haven't finished my Algebra, and it's nearly dinner time, anyway." "No it isn't,—and no matter if it is. Come on, I tell you!... more...

CHAPTER I It did not seem a very pleasant room. To be sure, there were a great many nice things in it. There was rose-colored paper on the wall, and the woodwork was of ivory, with gilt lines. There were pictures of ships on the ocean and of high trees and of the sun going down behind a hill, and there was one of an old mill with nobody at all in sight. And there was one picture with dogs in it. There... more...

Chapter I: The Bertolini "The Signora had no business to do it," said Miss Bartlett, "no business at all. She promised us south rooms with a view close together, instead of which here are north rooms, looking into a courtyard, and a long way apart. Oh, Lucy!" "And a Cockney, besides!" said Lucy, who had been further saddened by the Signora's unexpected accent. "It might... more...

CHAPTER I Willis Thornton Displays His Pluck Train No. 6 on the D. & P.W., two hours late at Limon, was rushing and jolting along over its rickety roadbed. The rain fell in torrents, the heavy peals of thunder seemed about to tear the car to pieces, the black and threatening clouds blotted out the landscape, and the passengers could hear nothing but the roar of the thunder and the rattle of the... more...

CHAPTER I THE LEGATION AT PARIS There seemed to be some unusual commotion, a suppressed excitement, about the new and stately American Legation at Paris on the morning of the 3d of February in the year of grace (but not for France—her days and years of grace were over!) 1789. The handsome mansion at the corner of the Grande Route des Champs Elysées and the rue Neuve de Berry, which had lately... more...

Just After The Ball. The storm-door closes with a bang! My escort, a stupid fellow, has said "Good-night!" He drives down the street in his old rattletrap of a coupe. I am so glad he is gone! And yet I am always afraid of burglars—or—something dreadful, whenever I go into the house alone so late at night. I bolt the inside door. I mount the hall-chair, left waiting by papa, and, trembling... more...

CHAPTER I Dawn held the world in stillness. In the vast stretches of barren hills and soft sands there was nothing living or stirring but the figure of an Englishman, standing at the door of his tent. At the hour of sunrise and sunset the East is its own. Every suggestion of Western influence and foreign invasion is wiped out. The going and the coming of the sun throws the land of the Pharaohs, the... more...

PREFATORY. In the History and Genealogies of Ancient Windsor, Conn., published in 1859, speaking of the influence of the old French wars upon the religious, moral and social life of New England, I used this language: "Then came war, and young New England brought from the long Canadian campaigns, stores of loose camp vices and recklessness, which soon flooded the land with immorality and infidelity.... more...

The PlanA screaming streak in the night—a cloud of billowing steam—and the climax of Hawk Carse's spectacular "Affair of the Brains" is over.Like a projectile Hawk Carse shot out in a direction away from Earth.The career of Hawk Carse, taken broadly, divides itself into three main phases, and it is with the Ku Sui adventures of the second phase that we have been concerned in this... more...