Fiction Books

THE DREAMER The boy sat with his back to a rock, his knees drawn up and clasped within fingers nervously interlocked. His eyes were fixed upon the great stretch of landscape below, shadowy now, and indistinct, like a rolling plain of patchwork woven by mysterious fingers. Gray mists were floating over the meadows and low-lying lands. Away in the distance they marked the circuitous course of the river,... more...

CHAPTER I. VISCOUNT IPSDEN, aged twenty-five, income eighteen thousand pounds per year, constitution equine, was unhappy! This might surprise some people; but there are certain blessings, the non-possession of which makes more people discontented than their possession renders happy. Foremost among these are "Wealth and Rank." Were I to add "Beauty" to the list, such men and women as go... more...

CHAPTER FIRST. How have I sinn'd, that this afflictionShould light so heavy on me? I have no more sons,And this no more mine own.—My grand curseHang o'er his head that thus transformed thee!—Travel? I'll send my horse to travel next.Monsieur Thomas. You have requested me, my dear friend, to bestow some of that leisure, with which Providence has blessed the decline of my life, in... more...

CHAPTER I IN THE CHURCH It was Sunday morning in a church at New Laodicea. The bell had ceased pealing and the great organ began its prelude with deep bass notes that vibrated through the stately building. The members of the choir were all in their places in the rear gallery, and prepared in order their music in the racks before them. Below the worshipers poured in steady, quiet streams down the... more...

CHAPTER I. THE NAMELESS BAY In the noon of a September day in the year of our dear Lord 1395, a merchant vessel nodded sleepily upon the gentle swells of warm water flowing in upon the Syrian coast. A modern seafarer, looking from the deck of one of the Messagerie steamers now plying the same line of trade, would regard her curiously, thankful to the calm which held her while he slaked his wonder, yet... more...

Barbara Thorne sat leaning her head on her hand, looking at a photograph that lay on the table beneath her eyes. She had not intended to look for that when she pulled out a dusty drawer full of old letters, papers, and account-books to arrange and set in order. But when in the course of her rummaging and tidying she found that picture in her hand, she paused in her task. The neglected drawer stood... more...

Evening Prayer. "Our Father." The mother's voice was low and tender, and solemn. "Our Father." On two sweet voices the tones were borne upward. It was the innocence of reverent children that gave them utterance. "Who art in heaven." "Who art in heaven," repeated the children, one with her eyes bent meekly down, and the other looking upward, as if she would penetrate... more...

CHAPTER I. ANDREW HOWLAND belonged to that class of rigid moralists who can tolerate in others no wanderings from the right way. His children were forced into the straight jacket of external consistency from their earliest infancy; and if they deviated from the right line in which they were required to walk, punishment was sure to follow. A child loves his parent naturally. The latter may be harsh, and... more...

"YIM" Dar ban a little faller,  Ay tenk his name ban Yim,And nearly every morning  Ay used to seeing him.He used to stand in gatevay,  And call me Svede, and ayAnt lak to hear dis nickname:  Ay ban a Norsk, yu say. But he ban little faller,  Ay tenk 'bout sax years old,And so ay used to lak him—  He ban too small to scold.Ay used to say, "Val, Yimmie,  Ay ant ban Svede,... more...

Jackson kept his promise to write to Westover, but he was better than his word to his mother, and wrote to her every week that winter. "I seem just to live from letter to letter. It's ridic'lous," she said to Cynthia once when the girl brought the mail in from the barn, where the men folks kept it till they had put away their horses after driving over from Lovewell with it. The trains... more...