Fiction Books

Over a hundred voyageurs were sorting furs in the American Fur Company's yard, under the supervision of the clerks. And though it was hard labor, lasting from five in the morning until sunset, they thought lightly of it as fatigue duty after their eleven months of toil and privation in the wilderness. Fort Mackinac was glittering white on the heights above them, and half-way up a paved ascent... more...

WHEN GOD LAUGHS (with compliments to Harry Cowell) "The gods, the gods are stronger; timeFalls down before them, all men's kneesBow, all men's prayers and sorrows climbLike incense toward them; yea, for theseAre gods, Felise." Carquinez had relaxed finally. He stole a glance at the rattling windows, looked upward at the beamed roof, and listened for a moment to the savage roar of the... more...

We humans are a strange breed, unique in the Universe. Of all the races met among the stars, only homo sapiens thrives on deliberate self-delusion. Perhaps this is the secret of our greatness, for we are great. In power, if not in supernal wisdom. Legends, I think, are our strength. If one day a man stands on the rim of the Galaxy and looks out across the gulfs toward the seetee suns of Andromeda, it... more...

THE DREAMEREven as a child he loved to thrid the bowers,And mark the loafing sunlight's lazy laugh;Or, on each season, spell the epitaphOf its dead months repeated in their flowers;Or list the music of the strolling showers,Whose vagabond notes strummed through a twinkling staff;Or read the day's delivered monographThrough all the chapters of its dædal hours.Still with the same child-faith... more...

CHAPTER I. Control of Trade and Plantations Under James I and Charles I. In considering the subject which forms the chief topic of this paper, we are not primarily concerned with the question of settlement, intimately related though it be to the larger problem of colonial control. We are interested rather in the early history of the various commissions, councils, committees, and boards appointed at one... more...

The wagon had come to rest among the trees an hour or two before sunset. It was a covered-in dray, and had been brought to in a little clearing of the scrubby undergrowth. Two horses had drawn it all the way from the coast. Freed of their harness, they stood in the lee of a great gum, their flanks matted with the dust which had caked with the run of sweat on them. The mongrel that had followed at their... more...

STORYOLOGY. I. What is a myth? According to Webster, it is 'a fabulous or imaginary statement or narrative conveying an important truth, generally of a moral or religious nature: an allegory, religious or historical, of spontaneous growth and popular origin, generally involving some supernatural or superhuman claim or power; a tale of some extraordinary personage or country that has been gradually... more...

CHAPTER I. THE “PILGRIM.” On the 2nd of February, 1873, the “Pilgrim,” a tight little craft of 400 tons burden, lay in lat. 43° 57’, S. and long. 165° 19’, W. She was a schooner, the property of James W. Weldon, a wealthy Californian ship-owner who had fitted her out at San Francisco, expressly for the whale-fisheries in the southern seas. James Weldon was accustomed every season to send... more...

CHAPTER I THE URSULINE LOSES A PUPIL "If the ship sails at dawn, then I must hasten to tell my mistress of the departure, and—of her father's letter." "I am loath to let yonder tide take her away so soon, Janet." "But my master's words are a positive command to leave Quebec at once," and Janet's eyes fell to the imperative line at the close of her letter which... more...

LETTER XIV. DUCLER—ST. GEORGES DE BOCHERVILLE—M. LANGLOIS. (Ducler, July, 1818.) You will look in vain for Ducler in the livre des postes; yet this little town, which is out of the common road of the traveller, becomes an interesting station to the antiquary, it being situated nearly mid-way between two of the most important remains of ancient ecclesiastical architecture in Normandy—the abbeys of... more...