Fiction Books

THE SETTING OUT. One pleasant morning in the autumn, when Rollo was about five years old, he was sitting on the platform, behind his father's house, playing. He had a hammer and nails, and some small pieces of board. He was trying to make a box. He hammered and hammered, and presently he dropped his work down and said, fretfully, "O dear me!" "What is the matter, Rollo?" said... more...

CHAPTER I I In the pupils' room of the offices of Lucas & Enwright, architects, Russell Square, Bloomsbury, George Edwin Cannon, an articled pupil, leaned over a large drawing-board and looked up at Mr. Enwright, the head of the firm, who with cigarette and stick was on his way out after what he called a good day's work. It was past six o'clock on an evening in early July 1901. To... more...

CHAPTER I. AN "UNLIMITED" MONARCHY And at last they find out, to their greatest surprise,That't is easier far to be "merry than wise." Bell: Images. "Here is Mr. Cashel; here he is!" exclaimed a number of voices, as Roland, with a heart full of indignant anger, ascended the terrace upon which the great drawing-room opened, and at every window of which stood groups of his... more...

CHAPTER I A BOLT FOR FREEDOM Most of the really important things in life—such as love and death—happen unexpectedly. I know that my escape from Dartmoor did. We had just left the quarries—eighteen of us, all dressed in that depressing costume which King George provides for his less elusive subjects—and we were shambling sullenly back along the gloomy road which leads through the plantation to... more...

CHAPTER I A WAIF OF THE NIGHT Parson Dan chuckled several times as he sipped his hot cocoa before the fire. It was an open fire, and the flames licked around an old dry root which had been brought with other driftwood up from the shore. This brightly-lighted room was a pleasing contrast to the roughness of the night outside, for a strong late October wind was careening over the land. It swirled about... more...

RODMAN THE KEEPER.The long years come and go,And the Past,The sorrowful, splendid Past,With its glory and its woe,Seems never to have been.—Seems never to have been?O somber days and grand,How ye crowd back once more,Seeing our heroes' graves are greenBy the Potomac and the Cumberland,And in the valley of the Shenandoah!When we remember how they died,—In dark ravine and on the mountain-side,In... more...

PREFACE. I first thought of this story—I should say I planned it, if the expression were not misleading—when living at the Lake of Como. There, in a lovely little villa—the "Cima"—on the border of the lake, with that glorious blending of Alpine scenery and garden-like luxuriance around me, and little or none of interruption or intercourse, I had abundant time to make acquaintance with... more...

CHAPTER I THE KNIGHT OF THE MAGIC CAVE When Cinders began to dig a hole no power on earth, except brute force, could ever stop him till he sank exhausted. Not even the sight of a crab could divert his thoughts from this entrancing occupation, much less his mistress's shrill whistle; and this was strange, for on all other occasions it was his custom to display the most exemplary obedience. Of a... more...

ON ROCKHAVEN "It ain't more'n onct in a lifetime," said Jess Hutton to the crowd of friends in his store, "that luck comes thick 'n' fat to any on us 'n' so fer that reason I sent over to the mainland fer suthin' o' a liquid natur; 'n' now take hold, all hands, 'n' injie yerselves on Jess." With that he began setting forth upon... more...

CHAPTER I. IN ST. JACOB STRAAT. "The Tree of Knowledge is not that of Life." "It is the Professor von Holzen," said a stout woman who still keeps the egg and butter shop at the corner of St. Jacob Straat in The Hague; she is a Jewess, as, indeed, are most of the denizens of St. Jacob Straat and its neighbour, Bezem Straat, where the fruit-sellers live—"it is the Professor von... more...