Fiction Books

MOUNTAIN PICTURES. I. FRANCONIA FROM THE PEMIGEWASSETOnce more, O Mountains of the North, unveilYour brows, and lay your cloudy mantles byAnd once more, ere the eyes that seek ye fail,Uplift against the blue walls of the skyYour mighty shapes, and let the sunshine weaveIts golden net-work in your belting woods,Smile down in rainbows from your falling floods,And on your kingly brows at morn and eveSet... more...

INTRODUCTION The combined qualities of the realist and the idealist which Dickens possessed to a remarkable degree, together with his naturally jovial attitude toward life in general, seem to have given him a remarkably happy feeling toward Christmas, though the privations and hardships of his boyhood could have allowed him but little real experience with this day of days. Dickens gave his first formal... more...

PREFACE. In one of those bright racy essays at which modern dulness delights to sneer, Hazlitt discussed the question whether the desire of posthumous fame is a legitimate aspiration; and the conclusion at which he arrived was that there is "something of egotism and even of pedantry in this sentiment." It is a true saying in literature as in morality that "he that seeketh his life shall... more...

AT first the two yards were as much alike as the two houses, each house being the exact copy of the other. They were just two of those little red brick dwellings that one is always seeing side by side in the outskirts of a city, and looking as if the occupants must be alike too. But these two families were quite different. Mr. Gilton, who lived in one, was a pretty cross sort of man, and was quite... more...

I It was the morning after the shipwreck. The five men still lay where they had slept. A long time had passed since anybody had spoken. A long time had passed since anybody had moved. Indeed, it, looked almost as if they would never speak or move again. So bruised and bloodless of skin were they, so bleak and sharp of feature, so stark and hollow of eye, so rigid and moveless of limb that they might... more...

CHAPTER I "It's plum amazin' ter heer ye norate thet ye've done been tradin' and hagglin' with old man McGivins long enough ter buy his logs offen him and yit ye hain't never met up with Alexander. I kain't hardly fathom hit noways." The shambling mountaineer stretched himself to his lean length of six feet two, and wagged an incredulous head. Out of pale eyes... more...

CHAPTER I If you are one of the favored few, privileged to ride in chaises, you may find the combination of Broadway during the evening rush-hour, in a late November storm, stimulating—you may, that is, provided you have a reliable driver. If, contrariwise, you happen to be of the class whose fate it is to travel in public conveyances (and lucky if you have the price!) and the car, say, won't... more...

MILL'S LOGIC. These are not degenerate days. We have still strong thinkers amongst us; men of untiring perseverance, who flinch before no difficulties, who never hide the knot which their readers are only too willing that they should let alone; men who dare write what the ninety-nine out of every hundred will pronounce a dry book; who pledge themselves, not to the public, but to their subject, and... more...

CHAPTER I MY FIRST JOURNEY I was born in the year 1800, in the town of Newnham-on-Severn, in Gloucestershire. I am sure of the year, because my father always told me that I was born at the end of the century, in the year that they began to build the great house. The house has been finished now these many years. The red-brick wall, which shuts its garden from the road (and the Severn), is all covered... more...

CHARACTER OF THE SCENERY OF TOURAINE. Although there is little that can be denominated bold, or strikingly romantic, in the general aspect of the country around Tours, it nevertheless, possesses charms of a peculiar and novel nature, alike calculated to gratify a lover of the picturesque, tranquillize the mind, and renovate the enfeebled energies of the valetudinarian. Hence it has long been famed as a... more...