Fiction Books

SINGLE COPIES. Any printed book will be sent prepaid on receipt of the list price. Keys and translations will be supplied to teachers only. Transportation charges on blank books, drawing books, blanks, and tablets will be at purchaser's expense. ORDERS. Each order should be clearly written and signed by the purchaser. It should give the post-office, county, and State, and also indicate whether the... more...

PREFACE When Death has set his seal on an eminent man's career, there is a not unnatural curiosity to know something of his life, as revealed by himself, particularly in letters to intimate friends. "All biography ought, as much as possible, to be autobiography," says Stevenson, and of all autobiographical material, letters are the most satisfactory. Generally written on the impulse of the... more...

Sir Walter Scott transmitted from Naples, in February, 1832, an Introduction for CASTLE DANGEROUS; but if he ever wrote one for a second Edition of ROBERT OF PARIS, it has not been discovered among his papers. Some notes, chiefly extracts from the books which he had been observed to consult while dictating this novel, are now appended to its pages; and in addition to what the author had given in the... more...

CHAPTER I. A REMARKABLE WOMAN. I remember as well as though it were yesterday the first time I met Auntie Sue. It happened during my first roaming visit to the Ozarks, when I had wandered by chance, one day, into the Elbow Rock neighborhood. Twenty years it was, at least, before the time of this story. She was standing in the door of her little schoolhouse, the ruins of which you may still see, halfway... more...

CHAPTER I. THE ROYAL TENT OF SPAIN.—THE KING AND THE DOMINICAN—THE VISITOR AND THE HOSTAGE. Our narrative now summons us to the Christian army, and to the tent in which the Spanish king held nocturnal counsel with some of his more confidential warriors and advisers. Ferdinand had taken the field with all the pomp and circumstance of a tournament rather than of a campaign; and his pavilion literally... more...

August, 1790. The bard, who paints from rural plains,  Must oft himself the void supplyOf damsels pure and artless swains,  Of innocence and industry: For sad experience shows the heart  Of human beings much the same;Or polish'd by insidious art,  Or rude as from the clod it came. And he who roams the village round,  Or strays amid the harvest sere,Will hear, as now, too many a... more...

CHAPTER I. On the 16th day of September, 1862, the author of this narrative was duly enlisted as a volunteer in the service of the United States; and, on the 22d of the same month, reported at Camp Stevens, Providence, R. I., for duty. At this place, the Twelfth Regiment Rhode Island Volunteers was organized; and in this city, on the 13th day of October, 1862, it was mustered into the service of the... more...

A CAMP IN THE SNOW Winter in the upper heights of the Bear Tooth Range is a glittering desolation of snow with a flaming blue sky above. Nothing moves, nothing utters a sound, save the cony at the mouth of the spiral shaft, which sinks to his deeply buried den in the rocks. The peaks are like marble domes, set high in the pathway of the sun by day and thrust amid the stars by night. The firs seem... more...

CHAPTER I ENGLAND'S FIRST LOOK In the early spring of 1476 the Italian Giovanni Caboto, who, like Christopher Columbus, was a seafaring citizen of Genoa, transferred his allegiance to Venice. The Roman Empire had fallen a thousand years before. Rome now held temporal sway only over the States of the Church, which were weak in armed force, even when compared with the small republics, dukedoms, and... more...

CHAPTER IRICK WANTS A DOG Rick Dalton sat on the sandy beach tossing white stones and bits of shell into the little waves that broke almost at his feet. The tide was just on the turn; soon it would come in, and the big, booming rollers would drive Rick farther up toward the dunes, where the wind was making a queer, whistling sound as it bent the long spears of saw-edged grass, whipping off venturesome,... more...