Fiction Books

THE STORIES OF THE THREE BURGLARS   I am a householder in a pleasant country neighbourhood, about twenty miles from New York. My family consists of myself and wife, our boy, George William, aged two, two maid-servants, and a man; but in the summer we have frequent visitors, and at the time of which I am about to write my Aunt Martha was staying with us. My house is large and pleasant, and we have... more...

THE ROMAUNT OF MARGRET. Can my affections find out nothing best,But still and still remove? Quarles. I.I plant a tree whose leafThe yew-tree leaf will suit:But when its shade is o'er you laid,Turn round and pluck the fruit.Now reach my harp from off the wallWhere shines the sun aslant;The sun may shine and we be cold!O hearken, loving hearts and bold,Unto my wild romaunt.Margret, Margret.... more...

D'RI AND I I A poet may be a good companion, but, so far as I know, he is ever the worst of fathers. Even as grandfather he is too near, for one poet can lay a streak of poverty over three generations. Doubt not I know whereof I speak, dear reader, for my mother's father was a poet—a French poet, too, whose lines had crossed the Atlantic long before that summer of 1770 when he came to... more...

THE KASÎDAH I The hour is nigh; the waning Queen   walks forth to rule the later night;Crownd with the sparkle of a Star,   and throned on orb of ashen light: The Wolf-tail* sweeps the paling East   to leave a deeper gloom behind,And Dawn uprears her shining head,   sighing with semblance of a wind: * The false dawn. The highlands catch yon Orient gleam,   while purpling still the... more...

THE DITCH THE BOYan American soldierTHE BOY'S DREAM OF HIS MOTHERANGÉLIQUEFrench childrenJEAN-BAPTISTEFrench childrenTHE TEACHERTHE ONE SCHOOLGIRL WITH IMAGINATIONTHE THREE SCHOOLGIRLS WITHOUT IMAGINATIONHESHETHE AMERICAN GENERALTHE ENGLISH STATESMAN The Time.—A summer day in 1918 and a summer day in 2018[pg 003]FIRST ACT The time is a summer day in 1918. The scene is the first-line trench of... more...

The Wrecker Sometimes the notion comes to me while I'm talkin' to people that maybe I don't make myself clear, and it's been so for some time now—the things I see in my mind fadin' away from me at times, like ships in a fog. And that's strange enough, too, if what people tell me so often is true—that it used to be so one time that the office clerks would correct their... more...

No windows broke any of the four plain walls of the office; there was no focus of outer-world sunlight on the desk there. Yet the five disks set out on its surface appeared to glow—perhaps the heat of the mischief they could cause ... had caused ... blazed in them. But fanciful imaginings did not cushion or veil cold, hard fact. Dr. Gordon Ashe, one of the four men peering unhappily at the display,... 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...

Dulaq rode the slide to the upper pedestrian level, stepped off and walked over to the railing. The city stretched out all around him—broad avenues thronged with busy people, pedestrian walks, vehicle thoroughfares, aircars gliding between the gleaming, towering buildings. And somewhere in this vast city was the man he must kill. The man who would kill him, perhaps. It all seemed so real! The noise... more...

CHAPTER I Lady Tozer adjusted her gold-rimmed eye-glasses with an air of dignified aggressiveness. She had lived too many years in the Far East. In Hong Kong she was known as the "Mandarin." Her powers of merciless inquisition suggested torments long drawn out. The commander of the Sirdar, homeward bound from Shanghai, knew that he was about to be stretched on the rack when he took his seat at... more...