Fiction Books

INTRODUCTION In the Valhalla of English literature Anne Manning is sure of a little and safe place. Her studies of great men, in which her imagination fills in the hiatus which history has left, are not only literature in themselves, but they are a service to literature: it is quite conceivable that the ordinary reader with no very keen flair for poetry will realise John Milton and appraise him more... more...

MARSTON; OR, THE MEMOIRS OF A STATESMAN. PART II."Have I not in my time heard lions roar?Have I not heard the sea, puft up with wind,Rage like all angry boar chafed with sweat?Have I not heard great ordnance in the field,And heaven's artillery thunder in the skies?Have I not in the pitched battle heardLoud 'larums, neighing steeds, and trumpets clang?" SHAKSPEARE. My entertainer... more...

I. THE LOST JOY. All day, where the sunlight played on the sea-shore, Life sat. All day the soft wind played with her hair, and the young, young face looked out across the water. She was waiting—she was waiting; but she could not tell for what. All day the waves ran up and up on the sand, and ran back again, and the pink shells rolled. Life sat waiting; all day, with the sunlight in her eyes, she sat... more...

CHAPTER I. THE BRADYS AS CUSTOM HOUSE DETECTIVES. The Collector of the Port of New York sat in his office in the Custom House with a look of annoyance upon his face. Several of his chief inspectors were standing about the room with the most uneasy expressions, for they were being censured unmercifully. "I tell you, gentlemen," the Collector was saying, angrily, "I am very much disgusted... more...

DREAMS The man, for the first time, stood face to face with Life and, for the first time, knew that he was a man. For a long time he had known that some day he would be a man. But he had always thought of his manhood as a matter of years. He had said to himself: "when I am twenty-one, I will be a man." He did not know, then, that twenty-one years—that indeed three times twenty-one... more...

INTRODUCTION. This volume has been compiled chiefly for the benefit of opium-eaters. Its subject is one indeed which might be made alike attractive to medical men who have a fancy for books that are professional only in an accidental way; to general readers who would like to see gathered into a single volume the scattered records of the consequences attendant upon the indulgence of a pernicious habit;... more...

POEMS. 'My bosom is chill'd with the cold, My limbs their lost vigour deplore! Alas! to the lonely and old, Hope warbles her promise no more! 'Worn out with the length of my way, I must rest me awhile on the beach, To feel the salt dash of the spray, If haply so far it may reach. 'As the white-foaming billows arise, I reflect on the days that are past, When the pride of my strength... more...

INTRODUCTION These paragraphs, dignified by the revised edition of Gallantry and spuriously designated An Introduction, are nothing more than a series of notes and haphazard discoveries in preparation of a thesis. That thesis, if it is ever written, will bear a title something academically like The Psychogenesis of a Poet; or Cabell the Masquerader. For it is in this guise—sometimes self-declared,... more...

STORY I CURLY TWISTYTAIL IS NAMED Once upon a time, not so very many years ago, in the days when there were fairies and giants and all things like that, there lived in a little house, on the edge of a wood, a family of pigs. Now these pigs weren't like the pigs, which perhaps you children have seen on most farms. No, indeed! They were just the nicest cleanest, sweetest pigs you ever dreamed... more...

THE ANSWER. Spare me, dread angel of reproof,And let the sunshine weave to-dayIts gold-threads in the warp and woofOf life so poor and gray. Spare me awhile; the flesh is weak.These lingering feet, that fain would strayAmong the flowers, shall some day seekThe strait and narrow way. Take off thy ever-watchful eye,The awe of thy rebuking frown;The dullest slave at times must sighTo fling his burdens... more...