Fiction Books

THE MEMOIRS OF Alexander Ramkins, &c. I was not above Seventeen Years of Age when the Battle of Gillycranky was fought between the Two Highland Generals, the Lord Viscount Dundee and Mackay. And being then a Stripling at the University of Aberdeen and understanding that several Clans were gathering into a Body in defence of King James III sold my Books and Furniture of my Lodgings, and... more...

There is a deathless charm, despite the efforts of modern novelists and playwrights to render it stale and hackneyed, attaching to the middle of the seventeenth century—that period of upheaval and turmoil which saw a stately debonnaire Court swept away by the flames of Civil War, and the reign of an usurper succeeded by the Restoration of a discredited and fallen dynasty. So long as the world lasts,... more...

The sense of personal loss occasioned by my brother's death is still so keen and vivid that if I am to write at all about him—and my duty in that respect is clear—it must be out of the fulness of my heart. My earliest recollections of him begin when I was a child and he was a bright, self-reliant lad in the home at Newcastle, the characteristics of which are with artless realism described in... more...

MEMOIR. William Watts McNair, who was born on the 13th September, 1849, joined the great Indian Survey Department in September, 1867, when he was only eighteen years old, and served the Government of Her Majesty the Queen and Empress of India faithfully unto the day of his death, on the 13th of August, 1889. In the official proceedings or notes of the Surveyor-General of India, for August, 1889, will... more...

CHAPTER I. The grandfather of Colonel Aaron Burr, the subject of these memoirs, was a German by birth, and of noble parentage. Shortly after his arrival in North America, he settled in Fairfield, Connecticut, where he purchased a large tract of land, and reared a numerous family. A part of this landed estate remained in the possession of his lineal descendants until long after the revolutionary war.... more...

BATTLE OF SPOTTSYLVANIA—HANCOCK'S POSITION—ASSAULT OF WARREN'S AND WRIGHT'S CORPS—UPTON PROMOTED ON THE FIELD—GOOD NEWS FROM BUTLER AND SHERIDAN. The Mattapony River is formed by the junction of the Mat, the Ta, the Po and the Ny rivers, the last being the northernmost of the four. It takes its rise about a mile south and a little east of the Wilderness Tavern. The Po rises... more...

FIRST MEETING WITH SECRETARY STANTON—GENERAL ROSECRANS—COMMANDING MILITARY DIVISION OF MISSISSIPPI— ANDREW JOHNSON'S ADDRESS—ARRIVAL AT CHATTANOOGA. The reply (to my telegram of October 16, 1863, from Cairo, announcing my arrival at that point) came on the morning of the 17th, directing me to proceed immediately to the Galt House, Louisville, where I would meet an officer of the War... more...

CHAPTER I. ANCESTRY—BIRTH—BOYHOOD. My family is American, and has been for generations, in all its branches, direct and collateral. Mathew Grant, the founder of the branch in America, of which I am a descendant, reached Dorchester, Massachusetts, in May, 1630. In 1635 he moved to what is now Windsor, Connecticut, and was the surveyor for that colony for more than forty years. He was also, for many... more...

CHAPTER I. The grandfather of Colonel Aaron Burr, the subject of these memoirs, was a German by birth, and of noble parentage. Shortly after his arrival in North America, he settled in Fairfield, Connecticut, where he purchased a large tract of land, and reared a numerous family. A part of this landed estate remained in the possession of his lineal descendants until long after the revolutionary war.... more...

CHAPTER I. Colonel Burr's study of the law [1] has been already briefly noticed. He brought to that study a classic education as complete as could, at that time, be acquired in our country; and to this was added a knowledge of the world, perhaps nowhere better taught than in the camp, as well as a firmness and hardihood of character which military life usually confers, and which is indispensable... more...