Fiction Books

GRANDMOTHER'S CHAIR. Grandmother sits in her easy chairSoftly humming some old-time air;And as she sings, her needles keep paceWith the smiles that flit o'er her wrinkled face;While the fire-light flickers, and fades away,And comes again like the breaking day. From morning till evening she knits and sings,While ever the pendulum tireless swingsThe moments around, with its tick and stroke,Nor... more...

He stole a ride to the Moon in search of glory, but found a far different destiny. His eyes were a little feverish—as they had been of late—and his voice held a continuous intensity—as though he were imparting a secret. "I've got to get on that ship! I've got to, I tell you! And I'm going to make it!" Different members of the group regarded him variously, some with... more...

A CHARIOT OF FIRE When the White Mountain express to Boston stopped at Beverly, it slowed op reluctantly, crashed off the baggage, and dashed on with the nervousness of a train that is unmercifully and unpardonably late. It was a September night, and the channel of home-bound summer travel was clogged and heaving. A middle-aged man—a plain fellow, who was one of the Beverly passengers—stood for a... more...

THE ketch drifted into the serene inclosure of the bay as silently as the reflections moving over the mirrorlike surface of the water. Beyond a low arm of land that hid the sea the western sky was a single, clear yellow; farther on the left the pale, incalculably old limbs of cypress, their roots bare, were hung with gathering shadows as delicate as their own faint foliage. The stillness was emphasized... more...

A very famous pirate of his day was Captain Robertson Keitt. Before embarking upon his later career of infamy, he was, in the beginning, very well known as a reputable merchant in the island of Jamaica. Thence entering, first of all, upon the business of the African trade, he presently, by regular degrees, became a pirate, and finally ended his career as one of the most renowned freebooters of history.... more...

CHAPTER I MR. PUNCH AND THE CLOCK-TOWER When the Little Boy first went to the Old Tobacco Shop, he stood a long while before going in, to look at the wooden figure which stood beside the door. His father was sitting at home in his carpet-slippers, waiting for tobacco for his pipe, but when the Little Boy saw the wooden figure he forgot all about hurrying,—"Now don't be long," his mother... more...

ENTER MR. FEUERSTEIN On an afternoon late in April Feuerstein left his boarding-house in East Sixteenth Street, in the block just beyond the eastern gates of Stuyvesant Square, and paraded down Second Avenue. A romantic figure was Feuerstein, of the German Theater stock company. He was tall and slender, and had large, handsome features. His coat was cut long over the shoulders and in at the waist to... more...

One memorable night in Lonesome Cove the ranger of the county entered upon a momentous crisis in his life. What hour it was he could hardly have said, for the primitive household reckoned time by the sun when it shone, by the domestic routine when no better might be. It was late. The old crone in the chimney-corner nodded over her knitting. In the trundle-bed at the farther end of the shadowy room were... more...

THE WATER-HOLE A fitful breeze played among the mesquite bushes. The naked earth, where it showed between the clumps of grass, was baked plaster hard. It burned like hot slag, and except for a panting lizard here and there, or a dust-gray jack-rabbit, startled from its covert, nothing animate stirred upon its face. High and motionless in the blinding sky a buzzard poised; long-tailed Mexican crows... more...

THE FIRST OLYNTHIAC. THE ARGUMENT. Olynthus was a city in Macedonia, at the head of the Toronaic gulf, and north of the peninsula of Pallene. It was colonized by a people from Chalcis in Euboea, and commanded a large district called Chalcidice, in which there were thirty-two cities. Over all this tract the sway of Olynthus was considerable, and she had waged wars anciently with Athens and Sparta, and... more...