Fiction Books

CHAPTER 1 If the dollar Quinby Graham tossed up on New Year's eve had not elected to slip through his fingers and roll down the sewer grating, there might have been no story to write. Quin had said, "Tails, yes"; and who knows but that down there under the pavement that coin of fate was registering "Heads, no"? It was useless to suggest trying it over, however, for neither of the... more...

THE EXPANSION OF ENGLAND. 'There is a vulgar view of politics which sinks them into a mere struggle of interests and parties, and there is a foppish kind of history which aims only at literary display, which produces delightful books hovering between poetry and prose. These perversions, according to me, come from an unnatural divorce between two subjects which belong to one another. Politics are... more...

THE MEMOIRS OF Alexander Ramkins, &c. I was not above Seventeen Years of Age when the Battle of Gillycranky was fought between the Two Highland Generals, the Lord Viscount Dundee and Mackay. And being then a Stripling at the University of Aberdeen and understanding that several Clans were gathering into a Body in defence of King James III sold my Books and Furniture of my Lodgings, and... more...

CHAPTER ITHE CAVERNS OF SELEUCIA A savage, barren, inhospitable region lies before us, the cavernous valley of Seleucia—a veritable home for an anchorite, for there is nothing therein to remind one of the living world; the whole district resembles a vast ruined tomb, with its base overgrown by green weeds. Here is everything which begets gloom—the blackest religious fanaticism, the darkest... more...

CHAPTER I.PROLOGUE—THE WANDERER. Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean, Tears from the depth of some divine despair Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes, In looking on the happy Autumn fields, And thinking of the days that are no more. Tennyson’s . Not much of a picture, certainly! Only a stretch of wide sunny road, with a tamarisk hedge and a clump of shadowy elms; a stray sheep... more...

“Two bad Boys”—Sergeant Ripsy. “Oh, bother!” The utterer of these two impatient words threw down a sheet of notepaper from which he had been reading, carefully smoothed out the folds to make it flat, and then, balancing it upon one finger as he sat back in a cane chair with his heels upon the table, gave the paper a flip with his nail and sent it skimming out of the window of his military... more...

AN OFFER REJECTED "I am afraid I don't understand you, Mr. Lyne." Odette Rider looked gravely at the young man who lolled against his open desk. Her clear skin was tinted with the faintest pink, and there was in the sober depths of those grey eyes of hers a light which would have warned a man less satisfied with his own genius and power of persuasion than Thornton Lyne. He was not looking... more...

Coming to the King. I came from very far to see    The King of Salem, for I had been toldOf glory and of wisdom manyfold,  And condescension infinite and free.Now could I rest, when I had heard his fame,  In that dark lonely land of death, from whence I came? I came (but not like Sheba's queen), alone!      No stately train, no costly gifts to bring;No friend at court, save One the... more...

PREFACE When my publishers were good enough to propose that I should undertake this book, they were also good enough to suggest that the Introduction should be of a character somewhat different from that of a school-anthology, and should attempt to deal with the Art of Letter-writing, and the nature of the Letter, as such. I formed a plan accordingly, by which the letters, and their separate Prefatory... more...

THE THREE SISTERS Thirty years ago on a wet autumn evening the household of Mallett's Lodge was gathered round the death-bed of Ursula Mallow, the eldest of the three sisters who inhabited it. The dingy moth-eaten curtains of the old wooden bedstead were drawn apart, the light of a smoking oil-lamp falling upon the hopeless countenance of the dying woman as she turned her dull eyes upon her... more...