Fiction Books

Everybody was out-of-doors; everybody was in the principal street of the village—not on the sidewalks, but all over the street; everybody was lounging, loafing, chatting, waiting, alert, expectant, interested—for it was train-time. That is to say, it was diligence-time—the half-dozen big diligences would soon be arriving from Geneva, and the village was interested, in many ways, in knowing how... more...

The scheme of a banquet to celebrate the initial success of 'Every Other Week' expanded in Fulkerson's fancy into a series. Instead of the publishing and editorial force, with certain of the more representative artists and authors sitting down to a modest supper in Mrs. Leighton's parlors, he conceived of a dinner at Delmonico's, with the principal literary and artistic, people... more...

CHAPTER I MORRIS, MARY, AND THE AEROPHONE Above, the sky seemed one vast arc of solemn blue, set here and there with points of tremulous fire; below, to the shadowy horizon, stretched the plain of the soft grey sea, while from the fragrances of night and earth floated a breath of sleep and flowers. A man leaned on the low wall that bordered the cliff edge, and looked at sea beneath and sky above. Then... more...

PREFACE Those who during the past thirty or forty years have frequented working men's clubs or other centres of discussion in which, here and there, an Owenite survivor or a Chartist veteran was to be found, will often have heard of the Guernsey Market House. Here, it would be explained, was a building provided by the Guernsey community for its own uses, without borrowing, without any toll of... more...

CHAPTER I. NORA. "Why, then, Miss Nora—" "Yes, Hannah?" "You didn't see the masther going this way, miss?" "What do you mean, Hannah? Father is never at home at this hour." "I thought maybe—" said Hannah. She spoke in a dubious voice, backing a little away. Hannah was a small, squat woman, of a truly Irish type. Her nose was celestial, her mouth wide,... more...

PREFACE "Sanine" is a thoroughly uncomfortable book, but it has a fierce energy which has carried it in a very short space of time into almost every country in Europe and at last into this country, where books, like everything else, are expected to be comfortable. It has roused fury both in Russia and in Germany, but, being rather a furious effort itself, it has thriven on that, and reached an... more...

CHAPTER I. There was once, it may be now many hundred years ago, a good old fisherman, who was sitting one fine evening before his door, mending his nets. The part of the country in which he lived was extremely pretty. The greensward, on which his cottage stood, ran far into the lake, and it seemed as if it was from love for the blue clear waters that the tongue of land had stretched itself out into... more...

I am unwilling to send out this Harrison, the friend of some twenty years’ standing, without a few words of introduction to those readers who don’t know it. The book is full of interest, not only to every Shakspere student, but to every reader of English history, every man who has the least care for his forefathers’ lives. Though it does contain sheets of padding now and then, yet the writer’s... more...

CHAPTER I Down an old trail in the Ghost Range in northwestern Mexico, just across the Arizona border, a mounted prospector wound his way, his horse carefully picking its steps among the broken granite blocks which had tumbled upon the ancient path from the mountain wall above. A burro followed, laden heavily with pack, bed-roll, pick, frying-pan, and battered coffee-pot, yet stepping along... more...

PREFACE Among the difficulties which beset the path of the conscientious translator, a sense of his own unworthiness must ever take precedence; but another, scarcely less disconcerting, is the likelihood of misunderstanding some allusion which was perfectly familiar to the author and his public, but which, by reason of its purely local significance, is obscure and subject to the misinterpretation and... more...