Fiction Books

CHAPTER I The tiny, trivial touch of Destiny that caused the turn in Amarilly's fate-tide came one morning when, in her capacity as assistant to the scrub ladies at the Barlow Stock Theatre, she viewed for the first time the dress rehearsal of A Terrible Trial. Heretofore the patient little plodder had found in her occupation only the sordid satisfaction of drawing her wages, but now the... more...

The ancient magistrate is having lunch at noon and these areour attempts at capturing his thoughts in the midst of dining.Thoughts are expressed in both verse and prose form.Take this morsel by morsel. FIRST MORSEL We wish an end to war with promises and hopes of peace. We wish for peace ,we prepare for war. We threaten peace of others with war. We rouse ourselves with the cry to arms. In peace or war... more...

I I was on a French steamer bound from Havre to New York, when I had a peculiar experience in the way of a shipwreck. On a dark and foggy night, when we were about three days out, our vessel collided with a derelict--a great, heavy, helpless mass, as dull and colorless as the darkness in which she was enveloped. We struck her almost head on, and her stump of a bowsprit was driven into our port bow with... more...

Anyone who holds that telepathy and psi powers would mean an end to crime quite obviously underestimates the ingenuity of the human race. Now consider a horserace thathadto be fixed ... t was April, a couple of weeks before the Derby. We were playing poker, which is a game of skill that has nothing to do with the velocity of horse meat. Phil Howland kept slipping open but he managed to close up before... more...

THE BRONZE RING Once upon a time in a certain country there lived a king whose palace was surrounded by a spacious garden. But, though the gardeners were many and the soil was good, this garden yielded neither flowers nor fruits, not even grass or shady trees. The King was in despair about it, when a wise old man said to him: "Your gardeners do not understand their business: but what can you expect... more...

THE CRYPTOGRAM The strenuous rush of the day of suddenly changed plans was over, and with Gardiner, the assistant professor of geology, to bid him God-speed, Ballard had got as far as the track platform gates of the Boston & Albany Station when Lassley's telegram, like a detaining hand stretched forth out of the invisible, brought him to a stand. He read it, with a little frown of perplexity... more...

CHAPTER I. "PIONEERS, O PIONEERS" If you had stood on the borders of Askatoon, a prairie town, on the pathway to the Rockies one late August day not many years ago, you would have heard a fresh young human voice singing into the morning, as its possessor looked, from a coat she was brushing, out over the "field of the cloth of gold," which your eye has already been invited to see. With... more...

It has long been the ambition of the present publishers to offer to the public an ideal edition of the writings of Sir Walter Scott, the great poet and novelist of whom William Hazlitt said, 'His works are almost like a new edition of human nature.' Secure in the belief not only that his writings have achieved a permanent place in the literature of the world, but that succeeding generations... more...

UNTO THE THIRD GENERATION The Vrouw Grobelaar, you must know, is a lady of excellent standing, as much by reason of family connections (for she was a Viljoen of the older stock herself, and buried in her time three husbands of estimable parentage) as of her wealth. Her farms extended from the Ringkop on the one side to the Holgaatspruit on the other, which is more than a day's ride; and her stock... more...

FOOD. (chunnah). In the north of India the chief food on which horses are fed is gram, the seed of one of the pea tribe of plants. It is a crop that ripens in the beginning of the summer, when it is harvested, and the grain thrashed out by driving cattle over it in a circle. The dry stalks, that are broken up into small pieces, are used for feeding cattle on, and are known as “missa bhoosa,” in... more...