Fiction Books

INTRODUCTION. There is no need for any one to explain to the working men and women in America what this pamphlet is written for or why it is necessary that they should have this information. They know better than I could tell them, so I shall not try. I have tried to give the knowledge of the best French and Dutch physicians translated into the simplest English, that all may easily understand. There... more...

PREFACE. A readable book should instruct, entertain and amuse. The author, outside of the historical interest of this little book, has aimed to cover a broad-enough field for all classes of readers to find some nourishing food—at least in the way of variety and shifting scenes—from the standpoint of a young private. And in order to understand his viewpoint, a brief sketch of the author is... more...

Pleasant is a rainy winter's day, within doors! The best study for such a day, or the best amusement,—call it which you will,—is a book of travels, describing scenes the most unlike that sombre one, which is mistily presented through the windows. I have experienced, that fancy is then most successful in imparting distinct shapes and vivid colors to the objects which the author has spread... more...

THUNDERSTORMS My mind has thunderstorms,  That brood for heavy hours:Until they rain me words,  My thoughts are drooping flowersAnd sulking, silent birds. Yet come, dark thunderstorms,  And brood your heavy hours;For when you rain me words,  My thoughts are dancing flowersAnd joyful singing birds. Sometimes I hear fine ladies sing,  Sometimes I smoke and drink with men;Sometimes I play at... more...

CHAPTER I.   If you take the turn to the left, after you pass the lyke-gate at Combehurst Church, you will come to the wooden bridge over the brook; keep along the field-path which mounts higher and higher, and, in half a mile or so, you will be in a breezy upland field, almost large enough to be called a down, where sheep pasture on the short, fine, elastic turf. You look down on Combehurst and its... more...

CHAPTER I CURIOSITY IS AROUSED "I confess I'd like to know somethin' more about him." "Where did you run across him first?" "I didn't run across him; he ran across me, and in rather a curious way. We live in Linden Gardens now, you know. Several of the houses there are almost exactly alike, and about a month ago, at a dinner party we were givin', a young man was... more...

A HAUNTED HOUSE Whatever hour you woke there was a door shutting. From room to room they went, hand in hand, lifting here, opening there, making sure—a ghostly couple. "Here we left it," she said. And he added, "Oh, but here too!" "It's upstairs," she murmured. "And in the garden," he whispered. "Quietly," they said, "or we shall wake them." But it... more...

Army of the Cumberland and the Battle of Stone River. The Army of the Ohio, after crowding into the space of six weeks more hard marching and fighting than fell to the lot of any other army in the United States during the summer of 1862, was, on the last of October, encamped in the vicinity of Bowling Green, Kentucky. General Bragg and Kirby Smith, turning Buell’s left flank, had invaded Kentucky,... more...

Chapter I The great advantage of being the fool of the family—My destiny is decided, and I am consigned to a stockbroker as part of His Majesty's sea stock—Unfortunately for me Mr Handycock is a bear, and I get very little dinner. If I cannot narrate a life of adventurous and daring exploits, fortunately I have no heavy crimes to confess; and, if I do not rise in the estimation of the reader... more...

Jenny prepares to go a-journeying. “Jenny, my dear maid, thou wilt never fetch white meal out of a sack of sea-coal.” Jenny tossed her head. It would have been a nice little brown head, if it had not been quite so fond of tossing itself. But Jenny was just sixteen, and laboured under a delusion which besets young folks of that age—namely, that half the brains in the world had got into her head,... more...