Fiction Books

FLINGING THE GAUNTLET “Then you insist on ruining me, Mr. Bissell?” Bud Larkin, his hat pushed back on his head, looked unabashed at the scowling heavy features of the man opposite in the long, low room, and awaited a reply. “I don’t want to ruin anybody,” puffed old “Beef” Bissell, whose cattle overran most of the range between the Gray Bull and the Big Horn. “But I allow as how them... more...

BLACKBOARD DRAWING one of the teachers who read “The School Arts Book” from month to month doubt in the least the value of drawing in our schools, and there is no need of the slightest argument in its favor. Even in the lowest grades the teacher appreciates drawing as the natural expression of the thought and experience of the child; a spontaneous activity, having its relation to life, not a thing... more...

CHAPTER I OF A GREAT WHITE BIRD UPON A LAKE Spring was stealing lightly over the Connecticut hills, a shy, tender thing of delicate green winging its way with witch-rod over the wooded ridges and the sylvan paths of Diane Westfall's farm. And with the spring had come a great hammering by the sheepfold and the stables where a smiling horde of metropolitan workmen, sheltered by night in the rambling... more...

INTRODUCTION The two volumes here published contain but a small selection from the numerous writings of Acton on a variety of topics, which are to be found scattered through many periodicals of the last half-century. The result here displayed is therefore not complete. A further selection of nearly equal quantity might be made, and still much that is valuable in Acton's work would remain buried.... more...

THE PERFECT GUEST There are certain qualities that we all claim. We are probably wrong, of course, but we deceive ourselves into believing that, short as we may fall in other ways, we really can do this or that superlatively well. "I'll say this for myself," we remark, with an approving glance in the mirror, "at any rate I'm a good listener"; or, "Whatever I may not be,... more...

OUR HERO Two men were standing in front of the Empire Theatre on Broadway, at the outer edge of the sidewalk, amiably discussing themselves in the first person singular. It was late in September and somewhat early in the day for actors to be abroad, a circumstance which invites speculation. Attention to their conversation, which was marked by the habitual humility, would have convinced the listener... more...

A TERRIBLE ADVENTURE WITH HYENAS There are many mighty hunters, and most of them can tell of many very thrilling adventures personally undergone with wild beasts; but probably none of them ever went through an experience equalling that which Arthur Spencer, the famous trapper, suffered in the wilds of Africa. As the right-hand man of Carl Hagenbach, the great Hamburg dealer in wild animals, for whom... more...

SEND ROUND THE HAT Now this is the creed from the Book of the Bush—Should be simple and plain to a dunce:"If a man's in a hole you must pass round the hatWere he jail-bird or gentleman once." "Is it any harm to wake yer?" It was about nine o'clock in the morning, and, though it was Sunday morning, it was no harm to wake me; but the shearer had mistaken me for a deaf... more...

CHAPTER I It was a season of unequalled prosperity in Devil's Ford. The half a dozen cabins scattered along the banks of the North Fork, as if by some overflow of that capricious river, had become augmented during a week of fierce excitement by twenty or thirty others, that were huddled together on the narrow gorge of Devil's Spur, or cast up on its steep sides. So sudden and violent had been... more...

THE PERFECT FOOL ASKS A FAVOUR. "En voiture! en voiture!" If it has not been your privilege to hear a French guard utter these words, you have lost a lesson in the dignity of elocution which nothing can replace. "En voiture, en voiture; five minutes for Paris." At the well-delivered warning, the Englishman in the adjoining buffet raises on high the frothing tankard, and vaunts before... more...