Fiction Books

There was a swift padding of moccasined feet through the hall leading to the Indian agent's office. Ordinarily Walter Lowell would not have looked up from his desk. He recognized the footfalls of Plenty Buffalo, his chief of Indian police, but this time there was an absence of the customary leisureliness in the official's stride. The agent's eyes were questioning Plenty Buffalo before... more...

CHAPTER I IN THE BEGINNING Had I a plantation of this Isle, my lord— * * * * * I' the Commonwealth I would by contrariesExecute all things; for no kind of trafficWould I admit . . . riches, povertyAnd use of service, none. SHAKESPEARE How quaint seems the demand for details of life on this Isle of Scent and Silence! Lolling in shade and quietude, was I guilty of indiscretion when I babbled of my... more...

Chapter I Introduction Mysticism is a term so irresponsibly applied in English that it has become the first duty of those who use it to explain what they mean by it. The Concise Oxford Dictionary (1911), after defining a mystic as "one who believes in spiritual apprehension of truths beyond the understanding," adds, "whence mysticism (n.) (often contempt)." Whatever may be the precise... more...

INTRODUCTION Defoe has been recognized as the author of A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the Most Notorious Pyrates since 1932 when John Robert Moore suggested that the supposed author, Captain Charles Johnson, like Andrew Moreton, Kara Selym or Captain Roberts, was merely another mask for the creator of Robinson Crusoe. Although most of the first volume is of minor literary... more...

CHAPTER I. THE AUTOCRAT OF THE STAGECOACH. "Git up!" No leader of a cavalry charge ever put more authority into his tones than did Whisky Jim, as he drew the lines over his four bay horses in the streets of Red Owl Landing, a village two years old, boasting three thousand inhabitants, and a certain prospect of having four thousand a month later. Even ministers, poets, and writers of unworldly... more...

INTRODUCTION. While engaged in writing the story of Evelin Delorme it was my good fortune to make the acquaintance of Dr. Herbert L. Flint, the well-known hypnotist briefly referred to in chapter three. The science of Hypnotism being a theme of absorbing interest to me, I eagerly availed myself of the opportunity thus offered for exhaustive investigation of the subject, and was accorded frequent and... more...

CHAPTER I. MR. LARCHER GOES OUT IN THE RAIN The night set in with heavy and unceasing rain, and, though the month was August, winter itself could not have made the streets less inviting than they looked to Thomas Larcher. Having dined at the caterer's in the basement, and got the damp of the afternoon removed from his clothes and dried out of his skin, he stood at his window and gazed down at the... more...

CHAPTER I. PUNISHMENT. We will again conduct the reader into the study of Jacques Ferrand. Availing ourselves of the loquacity of the clerks, we shall endeavour, through their instrumentality, to narrate the events that had occurred since the disappearance of Cecily. "A hundred sous to ten, if his present state continues, that in less than a month our governor will go off with a pop." "The... more...

CHAPTER I I came to London on the fifteenth of June, having left it seven years before in company with my father, to go to Paris, two years before he died. It was drawing on to sunset as we rode up through the Southwark fields and, at the top of a little eminence in the ground saw for the first time plainly all the City displayed before us. We came along the Kent road, having caught sight again and... more...

He paused on the platform and glanced at his watch. The train on which he had just arrived was late. It hurried away from the station, and was swallowed up in the blackness of the tunnel, as if it knew its own shortcomings and wished to make up for them. It was five minutes of six, and as the young man looked back at the long flight of steps that led to the bridge across the tracks, a delicate... more...