Fiction Books

CHAPTER I "Married! And I Don't Know Her Name!" Ford lifted his arms above his head to yawn as does a man who has slept too heavily, found his biceps stiffened and sore, and massaged them gingerly with his finger-tips. His eyes took on the vacancy of memory straining at the leash of forgetfulness. He sighed largely, swung his head slowly from left to right in mute admission of failure to... more...

CHAPTER I. "We met ere yet the world had comeTo wither up the springs of youth,Amid the holy joys of home,And in the first warm blush of youth.We parted as they never part,Whose tears are doomed to be forgot;Oh, by what agony of heart.Forget me not!—forget me not!" —Anonymous. At nine o'clock the next morning Traverse went to the library to keep his tryst with Colonel Le Noir. Seated... more...

CHAPTER I. Subiaco lies beyond Tivoli, southeast from Rome, at the upper end of a wild gorge in the Samnite mountains. It is an archbishopric, and gives a title to a cardinal, which alone would make it a town of importance. It shares with Monte Cassino the honour of having been chosen by Saint Benedict and Saint Scholastica, his sister, as the site of a monastery and a convent; and in a cell in the... more...

Chapter I. Introduction. 1. The Study of Physiology. We are now to take up a new study, and in a field quite different from any we have thus far entered. Of all our other studies,--mathematics, physics, history, language,--not one comes home to us with such peculiar interest as does physiology, because this is the study of ourselves. Every thoughtful young person must have asked himself a hundred... more...

In those dim recesses of the consciousness where things have their beginning, if ever things have a beginning, I suppose the origin of this novel may be traced to a fact of a fortnight's sojourn on the western shore of lake Champlain in the summer of 1891. Across the water in the State of Vermont I had constantly before my eyes a majestic mountain form which the earlier French pioneers had named... more...

TIME AND THE GODS Once when the gods were young and only Their swarthy servant Time was without age, the gods lay sleeping by a broad river upon earth. There in a valley that from all the earth the gods had set apart for Their repose the gods dreamed marble dreams. And with domes and pinnacles the dreams arose and stood up proudly between the river and the sky, all shimmering white to the morning. In... more...

CHAPTER I. HEALTHFUL HOUSE. The carte de visite received that day, June 15, 189—, by the director of the establishment of Healthful House was a very neat one, and simply bore, without escutcheon or coronet, the name: COUNT D’ARTIGAS. Below this name, in a corner of the card, the following address was written in lead pencil: “On board the schooner Ebba, anchored off New-Berne, Pamlico Sound.”... more...

CHAPTER I The Challenge of the Mound It was a curious, somehow weird-looking thing, that mound. About a yard in height and three and a half in diameter, it squatted in the grassy grove next the clump of trees like an enormous, inverted soup plate. Here and there tufts of grass waved on it, of a richer, deeper color, testifying to the unwholesome fertility of the crumbling outer stuff that had flaked... more...

CHAPTER I. THE NOSE OF A SPY "Squire." said Mr. Hopewell, "you know Sam well enough, I hope, to make all due allowances for the exuberance of his fancy. The sketch he has just given you of London society, like the novels of the present day, though founded on fact, is very unlike the reality. There may be assemblages of persons in this great city, and no doubt there are, quite as insipid and... more...

INTRODUCTION The Vedic Hymns are among the most interesting portions of Hindoo literature. In form and spirit they resemble both the poems of the Hebrew psalter and the lyrics of Pindar. They deal with the most elemental religious conceptions and are full of the imagery of nature. It would be absurd to deny to very many of them the possession of the truest poetic inspiration. The scenery of the... more...