Fiction Books

CHAPTER I - A Difficult Case They did not look like women, or at least a stranger new to the district might easily have been misled by their appearance, as they stood together in a group, by the pit's mouth. There were about a dozen of them there—all "pit-girls," as they were called; women who wore a dress more than half masculine, and who talked loudly and laughed discordantly, and some... more...

LAWYER QUINCE Lawyer Quince, so called by his neighbours in Little Haven from his readiness at all times to place at their disposal the legal lore he had acquired from a few old books while following his useful occupation of making boots, sat in a kind of wooden hutch at the side of his cottage plying his trade. The London coach had gone by in a cloud of dust some three hours before, and since then the... more...

If we knew how the words in our language were made and what they have meant to successive generations of the men and women who have used them, we should have a new and very interesting kind of history to read. For words, like all other creations of man, were not deliberately manufactured to meet a need, as are the various parts of a bicycle or of an automobile; but grew gradually and slowly out of... more...

CHAPTER I. "What are you going to do with yourself this evening, Alfred?" said Mr. Royal to his companion, as they issued from his counting-house in New Orleans. "Perhaps I ought to apologize for not calling you Mr. King, considering the shortness of our acquaintance; but your father and I were like brothers in our youth, and you resemble him so much, I can hardly realize that you are not... more...

CHAPTER I "Well, Prince, so Genoa and Lucca are now just family estates of the Buonapartes. But I warn you, if you don't tell me that this means war, if you still try to defend the infamies and horrors perpetrated by that Antichrist—I really believe he is Antichrist—I will have nothing more to do with you and you are no longer my friend, no longer my 'faithful slave,' as you call... more...

Chapter I. The Unexpected Happens. And foorth they passe with pleasure forward led. —Spenser. BARBARA'S HOME."O Barbara! do you think papa and mamma will let us go? Can they afford it? Just to think of Italy, and sunshine, and olive trees, and cathedrals, and pictures! Oh, it makes me wild! Will you not ask them, dear Barbara? You are braver than I, and can talk better about it all. How can... more...

Phoebe Lyddon frowned, and, as an instant protest, twin dimples peeped into life at the left corner of her bonny mouth. In regarding that attractive ripple the down-drawn eyebrows were forgotten until they rose again into their natural arches. A sweet, childish contour of face chimed with her expression; her full lips were bright as the bunch of ripe wood-strawberries at the breast of her cotton gown;... more...

CHAPTER 1 3 May. Bistritz.--Left Munich at 8:35 P.M., on 1st May, arriving at Vienna early next morning; should have arrived at 6:46, but train was an hour late. Buda-Pesth seems a wonderful place, from the glimpse which I got of it from the train and the little I could walk through the streets. I feared to go very far from the station, as we had arrived late and would start as near the correct time as... more...

"Blast them!" the writer groaned in bitter accents. "How I hate those B. E. M's.!" "Hang them!" the artist yelled. "How I hate those B. E. M's.!" "Darn them!" the B. E. M. moaned. "How I hate those humans!" The artist and the writer sat staring at each other in wordless misery, their coffee untasted and their spirits at low ebb. Up above, in the... more...

CHAPTER 1 Rome had passed the summits and stood looking into the dark valley of fourteen hundred years. Behind her the graves of Caesar and Sallust and Cicero and Catullus and Vergil and Horace; before her centuries of madness and treading down; round about her a multitude sickening of luxury, their houses filled with spoil, their mouths with folly, their souls with discontent; above her only mystery... more...