Fiction Books

French Measure. “For thy walls a pretty slight drollery.” The Second Part of King Henry IV. “A bad lot. Yes, sir, a thoroughly bad lot.” “You don’t mean it.” “Yes, ma’am, a bad lot is the Uphill people. Good for nothing and ungrateful! I’ve known them these thirty-years, and no one will do anything with them.” The time was the summer of 1822. The place was a garden, somewhat gone... more...

JONES It was the first of June, and Victor Jones of Philadelphia was seated in the lounge of the Savoy Hotel, London, defeated in his first really great battle with the thing we call life. Though of Philadelphia, Jones was not an American, nor had he anything of the American accent. Australian born, he had started life in a bank at Melbourne, gone to India for a trading house, started for himself,... more...

I BITTER-SWEET Much of the tragical lore of the infant mortality, the malnutrition, and the five-in-a-room morality of the city's poor is written in statistics, and the statistical path to the heart is more figurative than literal. It is difficult to write stylistically a per-annum report of 1,327 curvatures of the spine, whereas the poor specific little vertebra of Mamie O'Grady, daughter to... more...

hen in 1814 Napoleon was overthrown and exiled to Elba, the British troops that had followed Wellington into southern France were left free for use against the Americans. A great expedition was organized to attack and capture New Orleans, and at its head was placed General Pakenham, the brilliant commander of the column that delivered the fatal blow at Salamanca. In December a great fleet of British... more...

It is wonderfully exciting to read the adventures of a shipwrecked mariner; to find him cast away on a desert island, destitute of everything that before seemed necessary to his very existence; to see him settling himself down in a strange and untried form of life, substituting one thing for another, doing altogether without some other thing, turning constantly from expedient to expedient, bending to... more...

When war was declared on Germany April 5th, 1917, the government sent out calls for volunteers. The auxiliary organizations were to be the first ones to go across, and it looked as if ambulance companies would be among the first to get into action. Many of the universities and colleges in the east started at once to organize ambulance companies. These companies were quickly filled, and the enthusiasm... more...

Chapter One. Arrival at the Promised Land. In that land of which we have so many records of early and high civilisation, and also such strong evidences of present barbarism,—the land of which we know so much and so little,—the land where Nature exhibits some of her most wonderful creations and greatest contrasts, and where she is also prolific in the great forms of animal and vegetable... more...

PREFACE In beginning what, if it ever gets finished, must in all probability be the last of some already perhaps too numerous studies of literary history, I should like to point out that the plan of it is somewhat different from that of most, if not all, of its predecessors. I have usually gone on the principle (which I still think a sound one) that, in studying the literature of a country, or in... more...

Chapter One. I was born in the city of Delhi, in Central India, where my father held a command as major in the old East India Company’s service. I was an only son, and my mother died shortly after I was born. I resided at Delhi until I was ten years of age. Having been attended as a child by an ayah, and afterwards taught to ride by one of my father’s syces, I learned to speak Hindostani before I... more...

. PARIS.--THE DODGE CLUB.--HOW TO SPEAK FRENCH.--HOW TO RAISE A CROWD. ILLUSTRATIONS. Dick!--Here I Invite My Friends.--The Club.--The Place Vendôme.--Keep It Buttons! . ORLEANS.--HOW TO QUELL A LANDLORD.--HOW TO FIGHT OFF HUMBUGS; AND HOW TO TRAVEL WITHOUT BAGGAGE. ILLUSTRATIONS. That's A Hotel Bill.--Cicero Against Verres. --Sac-r-r-r-ré. . THE RHONE IN A RAIN.--THE MAD FRENCHMAN.--SUICIDE A... more...