Fiction Books

PREFACE Brave Serbia has not been forgotten in her hour of need by the women of England. For the Women's Imperial Service League, with Mrs. St. Clair Stobart as directress, went out to Serbia under the ægis of the Serbian Relief Fund, after arduous work out in Antwerp and after at Cherbourg. Mrs. Stobart decided that ours should be a Field Hospital owing to typhus and other fever raging in the... more...

CHILDHOOD My mother was fond of travelling: she would go from Spain to England, from London to Paris, from Paris to Berlin, and from there to Christiania; then she would come back, embrace me, and set out again for Holland, her native country. She used to send my nurse clothing for herself and cakes for me. To one of my aunts she would write: "Look after little Sarah; I shall return in a... more...

As Paul Lambrequin was clambering up the stairs of his rooming house, he met a man whose face was all wrong. "Good evening," Paul said politely and was about to continue on his way when the man stopped him. "You are the first person I have encountered in this place who has not shuttered at the sight of me," he said in a toneless voice with an accent that was outside the standard... more...

My mother was a lovely, delicate woman from the coast of Brittany, who was miserable sleeping on less than three mattresses, and who, it is said, was once injured by a falling leaf in her garden. My grandfather, a descendant of the French nobility whose family had ridden the tumbrils of the Revolution, tended her fragile body and spirit with the same loving care given rare, brief-blooming flowers. You... more...

MY FATHER MEETS THE CAT One cold rainy day when my father was a little boy, he met an old alley cat on his street. The cat was very drippy and uncomfortable so my father said, "Wouldn't you like to come home with me?" This surprised the cat—she had never before met anyone who cared about old alley cats—but she said, "I'd be very much obliged if I could sit by a warm furnace,... more...

'PLEASE, sir,' he said, 'could you tell me the right time?' 'Twenty minutes to eight,' I replied, looking at my watch. 'Oh,' he remarked. Then added for my information after a pause: 'I haven't got to be in till half-past eight.' After that we fell back into our former silence, and sat watching the murky twilight, he at his end of the park seat, I... more...

CHAPTER I. On the 16th day of September, 1862, the author of this narrative was duly enlisted as a volunteer in the service of the United States; and, on the 22d of the same month, reported at Camp Stevens, Providence, R. I., for duty. At this place, the Twelfth Regiment Rhode Island Volunteers was organized; and in this city, on the 13th day of October, 1862, it was mustered into the service of the... more...

CHAPTER I THROUGH THE FOOTHILLS WITH A FLOCK OF SHEEP In the great Central Valley of California there are only two seasons—spring and summer. The spring begins with the first rainstorm, which usually falls in November. In a few months the wonderful flowery vegetation is in full bloom, and by the end of May it is dead and dry and crisp, as if every plant had been roasted in an oven. Then the lolling,... more...

I WHEN MACMAHON WAS PRESIDENT I was married in Paris in November, 1874, at the French Protestant Chapel of the rue Taitbout, by Monsieur Bersier, one of the ablest and most eloquent pastors of the Protestant church. We had just established ourselves in Paris, after having lived seven years in Rome. We had a vague idea of going back to America, and Paris seemed a first step in that... more...

My name is Jimmy and I am five years old, and my friend Bobby is five years old too but he says he thinks he's really more than five years old because he's already grown up and I'm just a little boy. We live out in the country because that's where mommy and daddy live, and every morning daddy takes the car out of the barn and rides into the city to work, and every night he comes... more...