Fiction Books

BUD LEE WANTS TO KNOW Bud Lee, horse foreman of the Blue Lake Ranch, sat upon the gate of the home corral, builded a cigarette with slow brown fingers, and stared across the broken fields of the upper valley to the rosy glow above the pine-timbered ridge where the sun was coming up. His customary gravity was unusually pronounced. "If a man's got the hunch an egg is bad," he mused, "is... more...

THE WIDOW OF DUNSKAITH."Oh, mony a shriek, that waefu' night,Rose frae the stormy main;An' mony a bootless vow was made,An' mony a prayer vain;An' mithers wept, an' widows mournedFor mony a weary day;An' maidens, ance o' blithest mood,Grew sad, and pined away." The northern Sutor of Cromarty is of a bolder character than even the southern one—abrupt, and... more...

CHAPTER I. DEATH AND BURIAL OF A SLAVE'S INFANT. "The small and great are there, and the servant is free from his master." A Southern gentleman, who was visiting in New York, sent me, with his reply to my inquiries for the welfare of his family at home, the following letter which he had just received from one of his married daughters in the South. The reader will be so kind as to take the... more...

I MONT BLANC, the Dent du Midi, and the Aiguille Verte look across at the bloodless faces that show above the blankets along the gallery of the sanatorium. This roofed-in gallery of rustic wood-work on the first floor of the palatial hospital is isolated in Space and overlooks the world. The blankets of fine wool—red, green, brown, or white—from which those wasted cheeks and shining eyes protrude... more...

THE GOLDEN BEETLEORWHY THE DOG HATES THE CAT   hat we shall eat to-morrow, I haven't the slightest idea!" said Widow Wang to her eldest son, as he started out one morning in search of work. "Oh, the gods will provide. I'll find a few coppers somewhere," replied the boy, trying to speak cheerfully, although in his heart he also had not the slightest idea in which direction to... more...

Our ship, the space-flyer, Planetara, whose home port was Greater New York, carried mail and passenger traffic to and from both Venus and Mars. Of astronomical necessity, our flights were irregular. The spring of 2070, with both planets close to the Earth, we were making two complete round trips. We had just arrived in Greater New York, one May evening, from Grebhar, Venus Free State. With only five... more...

Safety devices that do not protect. The "unsinkable" ships that, before the days of Bergenholm and of atomic and cosmic energy, sank into the waters of the earth. More particularly, safety devices which, while protecting against one agent of destruction, attract magnet-like another and worse. Such as the armored cable within the walls of a wooden house. It protects the electrical conductors... more...

Old Martha wondered if the Poor Boy would have a smile for her. He had had so many in the old days, the baby days, the growing-up days, the college days, the "world so new and all" days. There were some which she would always remember. The smile he smiled one Christmas morning, when he put the grand fur coat around her shoulders, and the kiss on her cheek. The smile he smiled that day when they... more...

THE BLUE PAVILIONS.   TO A FORMER SCHOOLFELLOW. MY DEAR —, I will not write your name, for we have long been strangers; and I, at any rate, have no desire to renew our friendship. It is now ten years and more from the end of that summer term when we shook hands at the railway-station and went east and west with swelling hearts; and since then no report has come of you. In the meantime you may have... more...

LITTLE SAINT ELIZABETH She had not been brought up in America at all. She had been born in France, in a beautiful chateau, and she had been born heiress to a great fortune, but, nevertheless, just now she felt as if she was very poor, indeed. And yet her home was in one of the most splendid houses in New York. She had a lovely suite of apartments of her own, though she was only eleven years old. She... more...