Fiction Books

CHAPTER I FAMILY ANTECEDENTS The Mallocks of Cockington—Some Old Devonshire Houses—A Child's Outlook on Life "Memoirs" is a word which, as commonly used, includes books of very various kinds, ranging from St. Augustine's Confessions to the gossip of Lady Dorothy Nevill. Such books, however, have all one family likeness. They all of them represent life as seen by the writers from a... more...

"I'm getting old," Sam Chipfellow said, "and old men die." His words were an indirect answer to a question from Carter Hagen, his attorney. The two men were standing in an open glade, some distance from Sam Chipfellow's mansion at Chipfellow's Folly, this being the name Sam himself had attached to his huge estate. Sam lived there quite alone except for visits from... more...

CHAPTER ONE The girl came toward him across the silent room. She was young. She was beautiful. Her red hair curled like a flame round her eager, heart-shaped face. Her arms reached for him. Her hands touched him. Her eyes were alive with the light of pure love. I am yours, the eyes kept saying. Do with me as you will. Forrester watched the eyes with a kind of fascination. Now the girl's mouth... more...

SCENE I.—MUSIC MASTER, DANCING MASTER, THREE SINGERS, TWO VIOLIN PLAYERS, FOUR DANCERS. MUS. MAS. (to the MUSICIANS). Come into this room, and rest till he comes. DAN. MAS. (to the DANCERS). Come also, on this side. MUS. MAS. (to his PUPIL). Have you finished? PUP. Yes. MUS. MAS. Let me see. Very good. DAN. MAS. Is it anything new? MUS. MAS. Yes; it is an air for a serenade that I made him compose... more...

Nothing more generally or more recurrently solicits us, in the light of literature, I think, than the interest of our learning how the poet, the true poet, and above all the particular one with whom we may for the moment be concerned, has come into his estate, asserted and preserved his identity, worked out his question of sticking to that and to nothing else; and has so been able to reach us and touch... more...

LION’s MASQUERADE.AsAurora stept forth from the gates of the East,With her garland of roses, and dew-spangled vest,A clamour unusual assaulted her ear,Instead of the Lark, and her friend Chanticleer,At least though their voices she sometimes could trace,They seem’d overpower’d by the whole feather’d race:And such was the chirping, and fluttering then,It rouz’dan old Lionasleep in his... more...

CHAPTER XXI Gossip from one or two quarters, which reached Captain Nugent's ears through the medium of his sister, concerning the preparations for his son's marriage, prevented him from altering his mind with regard to the visits of Jem Hardy and showing that painstaking young man the door. Indeed, the nearness of the approaching nuptials bade fair to eclipse, for the time being, all other... more...

A HISTORY OF THE TOWN OF FAIRFAX When man reaches out into space to explore a new planet, his adventure will be comparable in many ways to that of the colonists who braved the space of water in the early seventeenth century to establish their proprietary rights on a strange continent called "America". These colonists found themselves confronted with the need to feed, house and clothe themselves... more...

THE HISTORY OF TOM THUMB In the days of King Arthur, Merlin, the famous enchanter, was out on a journey, and stopped one day at the cottage of an honest ploughman to ask for refreshment. The ploughman's wife brought him some milk in a wooden bowl, and some brown bread on a wooden platter. Merlin could not help observing that, although everything within the cottage was particularly neat and in good... more...

CHAPTER I. I GO TO STYLES The intense interest aroused in the public by what was known at the time as "The Styles Case" has now somewhat subsided. Nevertheless, in view of the world-wide notoriety which attended it, I have been asked, both by my friend Poirot and the family themselves, to write an account of the whole story. This, we trust, will effectually silence the sensational rumours which... more...