Fiction Books

CHAPTER I 'We go.' The lascar meditatively pressed his face, brown and begrimed with coal dust, streaked here and there with sweat, against the rope which formed the rough bulwark. His dark eyes were fixed on the shore near by, between which and the ship's side the water quivered quicker and quicker in little ripples, each ripple carrying an iridescent film of grey ooze. Without joy or... more...

CHAPTER I: A STROKE OF GOOD FORTUNE A mounted officer, followed by two orderlies, was proceeding at a brisk trot from Paris to St. Denis, in October, 1639, when he came upon a large party of boys, who, armed with sticks, were advancing in something like military order against a wall on the top of a low hill. "What are you doing?" he asked the lad who appeared to be the leader. "We are... more...

Chapter I A bright spring day was fading into evening. High overhead in the clear heavens small rosy clouds seemed hardly to move across the sky but to be sinking into its depths of blue. In a handsome house in one of the outlying streets of the government town of O—— (it was in the year 1842) two women were sitting at an open window; one was about fifty, the other an old lady of seventy. The name... more...

I MR. BEETLE MAN The man sat in a niche of the mountain, busily hating the Caribbean Sea. It was quite a contract that he had undertaken, for there was a large expanse of Caribbean Sea in sight to hate; very blue, and still, and indifferent to human emotions. However, the young man was a good steadfast hater, and he came there every day to sit in the shade of the overhanging boulder, where there was a... more...

CHAPTER I.on heresy and orthodoxy. The original meaning of the word heresy is choice.  “It was long used,” writes Dr. Waddington, “by the philosophers to designate the preference and selection of some speculative opinion, and in process of time was applied without any sense of reproach to every sect.”  The most fruitful source of speculative opinion is, and has ever been, religion; from the... more...

Our first prize. The first faint pallor of the coming dawn was insidiously extending along the horizon ahead as H.M. gun-brig Shark—the latest addition to the slave-squadron—slowly surged ahead over the almost oil-smooth sea, under the influence of a languid air breathing out from the south-east. She was heading in for the mouth of the Congo, which was about forty miles distant, according to the... more...

VIGI Wisest of dogs was Vigi, a tawny-coated hound That King Olaf, warring over green hills of Ireland, found; His merry Norse were driving away a mighty herd For feasts upon the dragonships, when an isleman dared a word: "From all those stolen hundreds, well might ye spare my score." "Ay, take them," quoth the gamesome king, "but not a heifer more. Choose out thine own, nor hinder... more...

By their fruits ye shall know them. Last Sunday I said something of the moral condition of Boston; to-day I ask your attention to a Sermon of the Spiritual Condition of Boston. I use the word spiritual in its narrower sense, and speak of the condition of this town in respect to piety. A little while since, in a sermon of piety, I tried to show that love of God lay at the foundation of all manly... more...

THE DRAMA OF LITTLE THINGS. "Gypsies! How very delightful! I really must have my fortune told. The dear things know all about the future." As Mrs. Belgrove spoke she peered through her lorgnette to see if anyone at the breakfast-table was smiling. The scrutiny was necessary, since she was the oldest person present, and there did not appear to be any future for her, save that very certain one... more...

My childhood passed so quietly and smoothly that it would be superfluous to mention it at all, except for the fact that such omission would leave a gap in these reminiscences. For this reason, and, also, in order that the American reader may get some idea of a good country home in Sweden, I shall relate very briefly some incidents from that time. My parents belonged to one of those old families of... more...