Fiction Books

EASTERN SHAME GIRL When there is a great peace Under the gold cup of the sun Joy reaches its flowering. In the twentieth year of the period Wan-li, there came, among the thousands of students who gathered at Peking for the examinations, a certain Li, whose first name was Chia and his surname Ch'ien-hsi, or "Purified-a-thousand times." His family were from Shao-hsing fu in Chekiang; his... more...

CHAPTER I. ORIGIN OF FAIRY STORIES. We are going into Fairy Land for a little while, to see what we can find there to amuse and instruct us this Christmas time. Does anybody know the way? There are no maps or guidebooks, and the places we meet with in our workaday world do not seem like the homes of the Fairies. Yet we have only to put on our Wishing Caps, and we can get into Fairy Land in a moment.... more...

The Trader in Zululand. Zululand is a wild region of mountain ranges, deep valleys and gorges, roaring torrents, rapidly flowing rivers, plains covered with mimosa bushes, meadows where cattle pasture and grow fat, and level plateaux extending for many miles across it, several hundred feet above the level of the ocean; while scattered here and there, in some parts pretty thickly, are to be seen the... more...

INTRODUCTION. This Dialogue begins abruptly with a question of Meno, who asks, 'whether virtue can be taught.' Socrates replies that he does not as yet know what virtue is, and has never known anyone who did. 'Then he cannot have met Gorgias when he was at Athens.' Yes, Socrates had met him, but he has a bad memory, and has forgotten what Gorgias said. Will Meno tell him his own... more...

cat is a very useful do animal. She destroys s and mice, which otherwise would do much injury. God has formed her to live among men. How soft her fur is! How quietly she lies and purs when she is treated kindly! How patiently she will sit, for many hours together, and watch for her prey! It would be well if little boys and girls would sit as still while they are learning their lessons. THE DOG. The Dog... more...

A DEATH-BED SCENE. A cold evening in the month of January, a drizzling rain storm blowing from the south-west, a cheerless sky, a dull, threatening atmosphere, together with almost impassable roads,—these are the chilling and uninviting circumstances with which, if we pay regard to truth, we must introduce our narrative to our readers. It is usual, with writers of fiction and romance, to preface... more...

THE EMPTY HOUSE Certain houses, like certain persons, manage somehow to proclaim at once their character for evil. In the case of the latter, no particular feature need betray them; they may boast an open countenance and an ingenuous smile; and yet a little of their company leaves the unalterable conviction that there is something radically amiss with their being: that they are evil. Willy nilly, they... more...

CHAPTER ISTRANGE BARGAININGS When a man came down out of the mountains looking dusty and gaunt as the stranger did, there was no marvel in the matter of his eating five cans of cove oysters. The one unaccountable thing about it was that Saul Chadron, president of the Drovers’ Association, should sit there at the table and urge the lank, lean starveling to go his limit. Usually Saul Chadron was a man... more...

THE CHILDREN OF THE UPPER GLEN. There was, of course, the Lower Glen, which consisted of boggy places and endless mists in winter, and a small uninteresting village, where the barest necessaries of life could be bought, and where the folks were all of the humbler class, well-meaning, hard-working, but, alas! poor of the poor. When all was said and done, the Lower Glen was a poor place, meant for poor... more...

Chapter I Julia Brabazon The gardens of Clavering Park were removed some three hundred yards from the large, square, sombre-looking stone mansion which was the country-house of Sir Hugh Clavering, the eleventh baronet of that name; and in these gardens, which had but little of beauty to recommend them, I will introduce my readers to two of the personages with whom I wish to make them acquainted in the... more...