Fiction Books

FLOWER BABIESI know where some babies are snug asleep,All in a long straight row.And I know that someone is singing to them,Singing soft and low.And all night long the babies sleepAnd dream baby dreams, you know.And the little stars are listening, too,To the singing soft and low.Shall I tell you where these babies are?You never can guess, I know.And shall I tell you just who it isThat is singing soft... more...

THE ARM CHAIR.Cowper, the poet of the Christian muse,Sung of the Sofa; could I but infuseSome of his talent in my laggard quill,Some of his genius on my verse distil,Then would I sing,—my theme too from the fair,—Of thy coevals, rhyme-creating chair!He who with artist's skill scooped out thy seat,Trim made thy elbows, uprights, and thy feet,Now fourscore years and four has measured... more...

PREFACE. Since the first publication of Cock Lane and Common-Sense in 1894, nothing has occurred to alter greatly the author’s opinions.  He has tried to make the Folklore Society see that such things as modern reports of wraiths, ghosts, ‘fire-walking,’ ‘corpse-lights,’ ‘crystal-gazing,’ and so on, are within their province, and within the province of anthropology.  In this attempt he... more...

BOOK III have often wondered by what arguments those who indicted (1) Socrates could have persuaded the Athenians that his life was justly forfeit to the state. The indictment was to this effect: "Socrates is guilty of crime in refusing to recognise the gods acknowledged by the state, and importing strange divinities of his own; he is further guilty of corrupting the young." (1) {oi... more...

Donkey Skin There was once upon a time a king who was so much beloved by his subjects that he thought himself the happiest monarch in the whole world, and he had everything his heart could desire. His palace was filled with the rarest of curiosities, and his gardens with the sweetest flowers, while in the marble stalls of his stables stood a row of milk-white Arabs, with big brown eyes. Strangers who... more...

CHAPTER I. The grandfather of Colonel Aaron Burr, the subject of these memoirs, was a German by birth, and of noble parentage. Shortly after his arrival in North America, he settled in Fairfield, Connecticut, where he purchased a large tract of land, and reared a numerous family. A part of this landed estate remained in the possession of his lineal descendants until long after the revolutionary war.... more...

CHAPTER I After luncheon they walked over from the ranch-house—more indeed a country villa, what with its ceiled redwood walls, its prints, its library, than the working house of a practical farm—and down the dusty, sun-beaten lane to the apricot orchard. Picking was on full blast, against the all too fast ripening of that early summer. Judge Tiffany, pattern of a vigorous age, seemed to lean a... more...

CHAPTER XVIII. IN his room, solitary and brooding, sat the defeated hero of a hundred fights. It was now twilight; but the shutters had been partially closed all day, in order to exclude the sun, which had never before been unwelcome to Tom Bowles, and they still remained so, making the twilight doubly twilight, till the harvest moon, rising early, shot its ray through the crevice, and forced a silvery... more...

CHAPTER I. DICK'S DADDY. etween Fox Peak and Smoke Creek Desert, on the western edge of the State of Nevada, is a beautiful valley, carpeted with bunch grass, which looks particularly bright and green to the venturesome traveller who has just crossed either of the two deserts lying toward the east. "Buffalo Meadows" the Indians named it, because of the vast herds of American bison found... more...

CHAPTER I THE GREAT ALKALI "And so this is the great Nevada desert!" Peggy Prescott wrinkled her nose rather disdainfully as she gazed from the open window of the car out over the white, glittering expanse—dotted here and there with gloomy-looking clumps of sage brush—through which they had been traveling for some little time past. "This is it," nodded her brother Roy; "what do... more...