Fiction Books

INTRODUCTION. The London publishers annually issue statistics of the works that have appeared in England during the year. Sometimes sermons and books on theology reach the highest figures; England is still the England of the Bible, the country that at the time of the Reformation produced three hundred and twenty-six editions of the Scriptures in less than a century, and whose religious literature is so... more...

CHAPTER XIII After that one calling of her name Alan's voice was dead, and he made no movement. He could not disbelieve. It was not a mental illusion or a temporary upsetting of his sanity. It was truth. The shock of it was rending every nerve in his body, even as he stood as if carved out of wood. And then a strange relaxation swept over him. Some force seemed to pass out of his flesh, and his... more...

CHAPTER I A NIGHT IN TOWN Night had fallen over Alaska—black, uncompromising night; a veil of impenetrable darkness had dropped upon the snow wastes and the ice-fields and the fettered Yukon, sleeping under its ice-chains, and upon the cruel passes where the trails had been made by tracks of blood. Day by day, as long as the light of day—God's glorious gift to man—had lasted, these trails... more...

GUY DE MAUPASSANT—A STUDY BY POL. NEVEUX "I entered literary life as a meteor, and I shall leave it like a thunderbolt." These words of Maupassant to Jose Maria de Heredia on the occasion of a memorable meeting are, in spite of their morbid solemnity, not an inexact summing up of the brief career during which, for ten years, the writer, by turns undaunted and sorrowful, with the fertility of... more...

CHAPTER I. THE ECCLESIASTICAL GOVERNMENT OF THE PARISH. The ecclesiastical administration of the English parish from the period of the Reformation down to the outbreak of the great Civil War is a subject which has been much neglected by historians of local institutions. Yet during the reign of Elizabeth, at least, the church courts took as large a share in parish government as did the justices of the... more...

CHAPTER I. SHOOTING A PRISONER OF WAR—A COMRADE TO THE RESCUE. "Sorry to keep you waiting, senor." "Faith, an' it's a polite nation I always said ye were." The first speaker, a Spanish officer, laughed mockingly as he uttered this apology. The man to whom he addressed his words was Dan Daly. Dan had been a boatswain's mate on the battle ship Indiana, then on the Cruiser... more...

CHAPTER I THE HOUSEHOLD AT HILLPORT She was walking, with her customary air of haughty and rapt leisure, across the market-place of Bursley, when she observed in front of her, at the top of Oldcastle Street, two men conversing and gesticulating vehemently, each seated alone in a dog-cart. These persons, who had met from opposite directions, were her husband, John Stanway, the earthenware manufacturer,... more...

Retief paused before a tall mirror to check the overlap of the four sets of lapels that ornamented the vermilion cutaway of a First Secretary and Consul. "Come along, Retief," Magnan said. "The Ambassador has a word to say to the staff before we go in." "I hope he isn't going to change the spontaneous speech he plans to make when the Potentate impulsively suggests a trade... more...

PREFACE Selections usually need no justifications. Some justification, however, of the treatment accorded Spinoza's Ethics may be necessary in this place. The object in taking the Ethics as much as possible out of the geometrical form, was not to improve upon the author's text; it was to give the lay reader a text of Spinoza he would find pleasanter to read and easier to understand. To the... more...

CHAPTER 1 Myles Falworth was but eight years of age at that time, and it was only afterwards, and when he grew old enough to know more of the ins and outs of the matter, that he could remember by bits and pieces the things that afterwards happened; how one evening a knight came clattering into the court-yard upon a horse, red-nostrilled and smeared with the sweat and foam of a desperate ride—Sir John... more...