Fiction Books

CHAPTER I. THE hands on the hall-clock pointed to half-past six in the morning. The house was a country residence in West Somersetshire, called Combe-Raven. The day was the fourth of March, and the year was eighteen hundred and forty-six. No sounds but the steady ticking of the clock, and the lumpish snoring of a large dog stretched on a mat outside the dining-room door, disturbed the mysterious... more...

THE AMERICAN GUIDETOPEKA, KANSAS EX SLAVE STORYOTTAWA, KANSASBY: Leta Gray (interviewer) "My name is Clayton Holbert, and I am an ex slave. I am eighty-six years old. I was born and raised in Linn County, Tennessee. My master's name was Pleasant "Ples" Holbert. My master had a fairly large plantation; he had, I imagine, around one hundred slaves." "I was working the fields... more...

"Nescio quid certè est: et Hylax in limine latrat." A Foreword: Which Asserts Nothing. In Continental periodicals not more than a dozen articles in all would seem to have given accounts or partial translations of the Jurgen legends. No thorough investigation of this epos can be said to have appeared in print, anywhere, prior to the publication, in 1913, of the monumental Synopses of Aryan... more...

THE BLUE MOON Nillywill and Hands-pansy were the most unimportant and happy pair of lovers the world has ever gained or lost. With them it had been a case of love at first blindness since the day when they had tumbled into each other's arms in the same cradle. And Hands-pansy, when he first saw her, did not discover that Nillywill was a real princess hiding her birthright in the home of a poor... more...

CHAPTER I THE life must be lived before the history of a life can be written, hence it is not my life that I am writing. Having been attacked in early youth by an abominable moral malady, I relate what has happened to me during three years. If I were the only victim of this disease, I would say nothing, but as there are many others who suffer from the same evil, I write for them, although I am not sure... more...

The slovenly wub might well have said: Many mentalk like philosophers and live like fools. They had almost finished with the loading. Outside stood the Optus, his arms folded, his face sunk in gloom. Captain Franco walked leisurely down the gangplank, grinning. "What's the matter?" he said. "You're getting paid for all this." The Optus said nothing. He turned away, collecting... more...

I ASHES OF EMPIRE In point of age, Gaston the strenuous was still no more than a lusty infant among the cities of the brown plain when the boom broke and the junto was born, though its beginnings as a halt camp ran back to the days of the later Mormon migrations across the thirsty plain; to that day when the advanced guard of Zophar Smith's ox-train dug wells in the damp sands of Dry Creek and... more...

The position of Ancient Egypt was unique, not in one, but in every sense. To begin at the very foundation of life in that country, we find that the soil was unlike any other on earth in its origin. Every acre of fruitful land between the first cataract and the sea had been brought from Inner Africa, and each year additions were made to it. Out of this mud, borne down thousands of miles from the great... more...

CHAPTER THE FIRST AN ALTERED WORLD I It was on a blustering March morning in 1919 that Tabs regained his freedom. His last five months had been spent among doctors, having sundry bullets extracted from his legs. He walked with a limp which was not too perceptible unless he grew tired. His emotions were similar to those of a man newly released from gaol: he felt dazed, vaguely happy and a little lost.... more...

BIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION By J. W. Mackail William Morris, one of the most eminent imaginative writers of the Victorian age, differs from most other poets and men of letters in two ways—first, he did great work in many other things as well as in literature; secondly, he had beliefs of his own about the meaning and conduct of life, about all that men think and do and make, very different from those of... more...