Fiction Books

CHAPTER I All the materials used in the manufacture of clothing are called textiles and are made of either long or short fibers. These fibers can be made into a continuous thread. When two different sets of threads are interlaced, the resulting product is called cloth. The value of any fiber for textile purposes depends entirely upon the possession of such qualities as firmness, length, curl, softness,... more...

TEXTILES AND CLOTHING Origin of Textile ArtsSpinning and weaving are among the earliest arts. In the twisting of fibers, hairs, grasses, and sinews by rolling them between the thumb and fingers, palms of the hands, or palms and naked thigh, we have the original of the spinning wheel and the steam-driven cotton spindle; in the roughest plaiting we have the first hint of the finest woven cloth. The need... more...

THE AUTHOR, TO HER FRIENDLY READERS. Written for the new edition of "Thaddeus of Warsaw," forming one of the series called "The Standard Novels." To such readers alone who, by the sympathy of a social taste, fall in with any blameless fashion of the day, and, from an amiable interest, also, in whatever may chance to afford them innocent pleasure, would fain know something more about an... more...

PART THE FIRST — THE LOTUS In those days there were many hermits living in the desert. On both banks of the Nile numerous huts, built by these solitary dwellers, of branches held together by clay, were scattered at a little distance from each other, so that the inhabitants could live alone, and yet help one another in case of need. Churches, each surmounted by a cross, stood here and there amongst... more...

Sandeman, 2624 CE It was midafternoon before Dana's hunger overcame her excitement at being on Sandeman, hiking with her chosen lord—her thakur, in the Sandeman term she preferred—and trying to track a balik. She hadn't gotten within two hundred meters of the wolflike predator, and had finally realized she wasn't going to, so the two found a small clearing with bare rocks which made... more...

I The time was the year of grace 1779; the locality, Morristown, New Jersey. It was bitterly cold. A northeasterly wind had been stiffening the mud of the morning's thaw into a rigid record of that day's wayfaring on the Baskingridge road. The hoof-prints of cavalry, the deep ruts left by baggage-wagons, and the deeper channels worn by artillery, lay stark and cold in the waning light of an... more...

CHAPTER I The road from Wellmouth Centre to East Wellmouth is not a good one; even in dry weather and daylight it is not that. For the first two miles it winds and twists its sandy way over bare hills, with cranberry swamps and marshy ponds in the hollows between. Then it enters upon a three-mile stretch bordered with scrubby pines and bayberry thickets, climbing at last a final hill to emerge upon the... more...

CHAPTER I THE GUN MAN’S HERITAGE Lost Valley lay like a sparkling jewel, fashioned in perfection, cast in the breast of the illimitable mountain country––and forever after forgotten of God. A tiny world, arrogantly unconscious of any other, it lived its own life, went its own ways, had its own conceptions of law––and they were based upon primeval instincts. Cattle by the thousand head ran on... more...

A DISCOVERY. I am not an inquisitive woman, but when, in the middle of a certain warm night in September, I heard a carriage draw up at the adjoining house and stop, I could not resist the temptation of leaving my bed and taking a peep through the curtains of my window. First: because the house was empty, or supposed to be so, the family still being, as I had every reason to believe, in Europe; and... more...

CHAPTER I. THE TRIAL Some years ago there was a trial in Dublin, which, partly because the parties in the cause were in a well-to-do condition of life, and partly because the case in some measure involved the interests of the two conflicting Churches, excited considerable sensation and much comment. The contention was the right to the guardianship of a boy whose father and mother had ceased to live... more...