Fiction Books

CHAPTER I THE ODDEST THING THAT EVER HAPPENED "Well, if that isn't the oddest thing that ever happened!" murmured Laura Belding, sitting straight up on the stool before the high desk in her father's glass-enclosed office, from which elevation she could look down the long aisles of his jewelry store and out into Market Street, Centerport's main business thoroughfare. But Laura was... more...

INTRODUCTION The verses in this volume cover very many and various occasions; and are therefore the very contrary of what is commonly called occasional verse. The term is used with a meaning that is very mutable; or with a meaning that has been greatly distorted and degraded. Occasion should mean opportunity; and in the case of poetry it should rather mean provocation. And the trick of writing upon... more...

THE CHILD Lemonnier had remained a widower with one child. He had loved his wife devotedly, with a tender and exalted love, without a slip, during their entire married life. He was a good, honest man, perfectly simple, sincere, without suspicion or malice. He fell in love with a poor neighbor, proposed and was accepted. He was making a very comfortable living out of the wholesale cloth business, and he... more...

he man in the pastel blue topcoat walked with steady purpose, but without haste, through the chill, wind-swirled drizzle that filled the air above the streets of Arlington, Virginia. His matching blue cap-hood was pulled low over his forehead, and the clear, infrared radiating face mask had been flipped down to protect his chubby cheeks and round nose from the icy wind. No one noticed him particularly.... more...

Marc Polder, Resident Comptroller of Torran, strolled idly down the dusty littered path that passed for a street. In the half-light of the pint-sized moon overhead the town looked almost romantic. One day, when civilization had at last been brought to these Asteroid bases, memory would make Torran heroic. But now, with the fact before the eyes, it was merely dirty and squalid. Only the scum of the... more...

"Bettersea trem? Right, miss!" My wife, who has been married long enough to feel deeply gratified at being mistaken for a maiden lady, smiled seraphically at the conductor, and allowed herself to be hoisted up the steps of the majestic vehicle provided by a paternal county council to convey passengers—at a loss to the ratepayers, I understand—from the Embankment to Battersea. Presently we... more...

Jack Crane lay all morning in the vacant lot. Now and then he moved a little to quiet the protest of cramped muscles and stagnant blood, but most of the time he was as motionless as the heap of rags he resembled. Not once did he hear or see a Bohas agent, or, for that matter, anyone. The predawn darkness had hidden his panting flight from the transie jungle, his dodging across backyards while whistles... more...

CHAPTER I. OF THE KING OF OAKENREALM, AND HIS WIFE AND HIS CHILD. Of old there was a land which was so much a woodland, that a minstrel thereof said it that a squirrel might go from end to end, and all about, from tree to tree, and never touch the earth: therefore was that land called Oakenrealm. The lord and king thereof was a stark man, and so great a warrior that in his youth he took no delight in... more...

FIRST NIGHT THE THREE HAPPY CHILDREN Not once upon a time but just now, in a white house by the side of a road, live three happy children. Their mother and father gave them very odd names, for two old uncles and one aunt, which pleased the old people very much. Their names are all written in the big family Bible,—Jehosophat Green, Marmaduke Green, and Hepzebiah Green. Jehosophat is just seven years... more...

The Shanty-Keeper's Wife There were about a dozen of us jammed into the coach, on the box seat and hanging on to the roof and tailboard as best we could. We were shearers, bagmen, agents, a squatter, a cockatoo, the usual joker—and one or two professional spielers, perhaps. We were tired and stiff and nearly frozen—too cold to talk and too irritable to risk the inevitable argument which an... more...