Fiction Books

I received a letter the day before yesterday from my old friend, Jaffery Chayne, which has inspired me to write the following account of that dear, bull-headed, Pantagruelian being. I must say that I have been egged on to do so by my wife, of whom hereafter. A man of my somewhat urbane and dilettante temperament does not do these things without being worried into them. I had the inspiration, however. I... more...

I. CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH I CALL it an old town, but it is only relatively old. When one reflects on the countless centuries that have gone to the for-mation of this crust of earth on which we temporarily move, the most ancient cities on its surface seem merely things of the week before last. It was only the other day, then—that is to say, in the month of June, 1603—that one Martin Pring, in the ship... more...

BOOK ONE THE BEATING HEART Jan of Ruffluck Croft never tired of telling about the day when his little girl came into the world. In the early morning he had been to fetch the midwife, and other helpers; all the forenoon and a good part of the afternoon he had sat on the chopping-block, in the woodshed, with nothing to do but to wait. Outside it rained in torrents and he came in for his share of the... more...

CHAPTER I. THE DETLIJ CLUB. In a handsome block of buildings in the neighbourhood of Piccadilly—a phrase which may embrace a considerable area, North, South, East or West—is located the quarters of that small and extremely select Club, known, and known up till now only to a favoured few, as the Detlij Club. The name, like the Club itself, is an uncommon one, and is simply indicative of the sad... more...

CHAPTER I A MISHAP AND ITS CONSEQUENCES "Will you please let me have two cream cakes?" The young woman behind the counter of the small bakery glanced kindly at the maker of this request, a little girl in a rather neat-looking dress, with a dark, earnest face and a pair of big, solemn brown eyes. "They're nice and fresh to-day," she remarked pleasantly; "they came out of the... more...

Love came somewhat late to Dr. Sylvester Murt. In fact, it took the epidemic of 1961 to break down his resistance. A great many people fell in love that year—just about every other person you talked to—so no one thought much about Dr. Murt's particular distress, except a fellow victim who was directly involved in this case. High Dawn Hospital, where 38-year-old Dr. Murt was resident... more...

I.—INTRODUCTIONS. To introduce persons who are mutually unknown is to undertake a serious responsibility, and to certify to each the respectability of the other. Never undertake this responsibility without in the first place asking yourself whether the persons are likely to be agreeable to each other; nor, in the second place, without ascertaining whether it will be acceptable to both parties to... more...

The University of Kansas Museum of Natural History received from J. R. Alcorn and Albert A. Alcorn a sizable collection of mammals taken in the summer of 1951 in Alaska. In addition to visiting localities at which they had collected in 1947 and 1948 (see Baker, Univ. Kansas Publ., Mus. Nat. Hist., 5:87-117, 1951) the Alcorns obtained specimens from localities not previously visited in the vicinity of... more...

INTRODUCTION. It is with a solemnized feeling that I enter on these Reminiscences. Except one, I have survived all the associates of my earlier days. The young, with a long life in perspective, (if any life can be called long, in so brief an existence) are unable to realize the impressions of a man, nearer eighty than seventy, when the shadows of evening are gathering around, and, in a retrospective... more...

The Catastrophe. It happened on our seventh night out from Cape Town, when we had accomplished about a third of the distance between that city and Melbourne. The ship was the Saturn, of the well-known Planet Line of combined freight and passenger steamers trading between London, Cape Town, and Melbourne; and I—Eric Blackburn, aged a trifle over twenty-three years—was her fourth officer. The Saturn... more...