Fiction Books

Under a boat, high and dry at low tide, on the beach, John Wood was seated in the sand, sheltered from the sun in the boat's shadow, absorbed in the laying on of verdigris. The dull, worn color was rapidly giving place to a brilliant, shining green. Occasionally a scraper, which lay by, was taken up to remove the last trace of a barnacle. It was Wood's boat, but he was not a boatman; he... more...

If it was good enough for your grandfather, forget it ... it is much too good for anyone else! Gramps Ford, his chin resting on his hands, his hands on the crook of his cane, was staring irascibly at the five-foot television screen that dominated the room. On the screen, a news commentator was summarizing the day's happenings. Every thirty seconds or so, Gramps would jab the floor with his... more...

Misgivings. (1860.)  When ocean-clouds over inland hills    Sweep storming in late autumn brown,  And horror the sodden valley fills,    And the spire falls crashing in the town,  I muse upon my country's ills—  The tempest bursting from the waste of TimeOn the world's fairest hope linked with man's foulest crime.  Nature's dark side is heeded now—    (Ah!... more...

CHAPTER I It was four o'clock in the morning when George Dupont closed the door and came down the steps to the street. The first faint streaks of dawn were in the sky, and he noticed this with annoyance, because he knew that his hair was in disarray and his whole aspect disorderly; yet he dared not take a cab, because he feared to attract attention at home. When he reached the sidewalk, he glanced... more...

FORCED BENEFITS.   The maxim, that men may safely be left to seek their own interest, and are sure to find it, appears to require some slight qualification, for nothing can be more certain, than that men are often the better of things which have been forced upon them. Those who advocate the idea in its rigour, forget that there are such things as ignorance and prejudice in the world, and that most men... more...

CHAPTER I. "Sir—sir, it is a boy!" "A boy," said my father, looking up from his book, and evidently much puzzled: "what is a boy?" Now my father did not mean by that interrogatory to challenge philosophical inquiry, nor to demand of the honest but unenlightened woman who had just rushed into his study, a solution of that mystery, physiological and psychological, which has... more...

RED LIGHT. Mr. Gryce was melancholy. He had attained that period in life when the spirits flag and enthusiasm needs a constant spur, and of late there had been a lack of special excitement, and he felt dull and superannuated. He was even contemplating resigning his position on the force and retiring to the little farm he had bought for himself in Westchester; and this in itself did not tend to... more...

CHAPTER I.Far on th' horizon's verge appears a speck—A spot—a mast—a sail—an armed deck!Their little bark her men of watch descry,And ampler canvas woos the wind from high.Lord Byron. On a bright day in the summer of 1643, a light pleasure-boat shot gaily across the harbor of Boston, laden with a merry party, whose cheerful voices were long heard, mingling with the ripple of the... more...

GRACE DANTON. A low room, oblong in shape, three high narrow windows admitting the light through small, old-fashioned panes. Just at present there was not much to admit, for it was raining hard, and the afternoon was wearing on to dusk; but even the wet half-light showed you solid mahogany furniture, old-fashioned as the windows themselves, black and shining with age and polish; a carpet soft and... more...

CHAPTER XVII. When the scenes in some long diorama pass solemnly before us, there is sometimes one solitary object, contrasting, perhaps, the view of stately cities or the march of a mighty river, that halts on the eye for a moment, and then glides away, leaving on the mind a strange, comfortless, undefined impression. Why was the object presented to us? In itself it seemed comparatively insignificant.... more...