Fiction Books

CHAPTER I At seven o'clock on a fine evening in April the gas had just been lighted in a room on the first floor of a house in York Road, Lambeth. A man, recently washed and brushed, stood on the hearthrug before a pier glass, arranging a white necktie, part of his evening dress. He was about thirty, well grown, and fully developed muscularly. There was no cloud of vice or trouble upon him: he was... more...

CHAPTER I. THE FORMATION OF TIDES AND CURRENTS. It has often been stated that no two well-designed sewerage schemes are alike, and although this truism is usually applied to inland towns, it applies with far greater force to schemes for coastal towns and towns situated on the banks of our large rivers where the sewage is discharged into tidal waters. The essence of good designing is that every detail... more...

CHAPTER I "Climb up in this tree, and play house!" Elizabeth Ferguson commanded. She herself had climbed to the lowest branch of an apple-tree in the Maitland orchard, and sat there, swinging her white-stockinged legs so recklessly that the three children whom she had summoned to her side, backed away for safety. "If you don't," she said, looking down at them, "I'm afraid,... more...

THE ORCHARD OF MARPHISE. What I here have to narrate occurs towards evening on a beautiful autumn day, in the orchard of Marphise, the noble Lady of Ariol. The orchard, which lies in the close vicinity of the ramparts of the city of Blois, is surrounded by a high wall, crowned by a hedge of yoke-elm. A handsome summer-pavilion rises in the middle of the garden. The trees are numerous, and their... more...

Rambling on foot in the spring of my life and the summer of the year, I came one afternoon to a point which gave me the choice of three directions. Straight before me, the main road extended its dusty length to Boston; on the left a branch went towards the sea, and would have lengthened my journey a trifle of twenty or thirty miles; while by the right-hand path, I might have gone over hills and lakes... more...

SPARK I. HOW THE STAR CAME INTO THIS WORLD. To begin with, it all happened a very long time ago,—some say five thousand years, some say ten thousand years, and one wise man says it never happened at all; but even the wise are not wise at all times, and I am inclined to believe that it was in one of those unwise times that the doubt was raised; for I believe it happened, although I am not sure about... more...

CHAPTER I. THE TAVERN OF ALISON THE HUFFY. On a Sunday, towards the end of the month of October of 1356, a great stir was noticeable since early morning in the little town of Nointel, situated a few leagues from the city of Beauvais, in the department of Beauvoisis. The tavern of Alison the Huffy—so nicknamed from her hot temper, although she was a good woman—was rapidly filling with... more...

CHAPTER I THE strangest, the most varied, the most erroneous opinions have been expressed with regard to the famous individual commonly known as Bluebeard. None, perhaps, was less tenable than that which made of this gentleman a personification of the Sun. For this is what a certain school of comparative mythology set itself to do, some forty years ago. It informed the world that the seven wives of... more...

The silver needle moved with fantastic speed, slowed when it neared the air shell around Earth, then glided noiselessly through the atmosphere. It gently settled to the ground near a wood and remained silent and still for a long time, a lifeless, cylindrical, streamlined silver object eight feet long and three feet in diameter. Eventually the cap end opened and a creature of bright blue metal slid from... more...

CHAPTER I "You are not soldiers! You are men of iron!" Such was the tribute of an idolized general to the men of the Twenty-eighth Division, United States Army, after the division had won its spurs in a glorious, breath-taking fashion at the second battle of the Marne in July and August, 1918. The grizzled officer, his shrewd, keen eyes softened to genuine admiration for the deeds of the... more...