Fiction Books

CHAPTER I THE SHOP It was an evening early in May. The sun was low, and the street was mottled with the shadows of its paving-stones—smooth enough, but far from evenly set. The sky was clear, except for a few clouds in the west, hardly visible in the dazzle of the huge light, which lay among them like a liquid that had broken its vessel, and was pouring over the fragments. The street was almost... more...

CHAPTER I I AM BORN The sun was slowly setting in the west, casting golden beams of light into the somber old room. That's the way it ought to begin, I know, and I'd like to do it, but I can't. I'm beginning with my being born, of course, and Nurse Sarah says the sun wasn't shining at all. It was night and the stars were out. She remembers particularly about the stars, for... more...

CHAPTER IDOCTOR AND PATIENT A little girl sat shivering in a corner of a reception room in the fashionable Hotel Voltaire. It was one of a suite of rooms occupied by Mrs. Antoinette Seaver Jones, widely known for her wealth and beauty, and this girl—a little thing of eleven—was the only child of Mrs. Antoinette Seaver Jones, and was named Alora. It was not cold that made her shiver, for across the... more...

CHAPTER IMARY LOUISE MAKES AN INVESTMENT Mary Louise had stood the test of being rich and beloved, and envied by all the daughters of Dorfield; and then of being poor and bereft, pitied by all who had formerly envied her. Soon after the death of her grandfather, Colonel Hathaway, had come the news of her husband's shipwreck. Hope of Danny Dexter's survival was finally abandoned by his... more...

THE BROKEN DOLL Mary Jane stood on the curbstone and stared into the middle of the street. Her face was white with fright and the tears which had not as yet come were close to her big blue eyes. Her little fists were clinched and even her perky plaid hair ribbon seemed to show amazement. And wasn't it enough to make any little girl stare? Her big, beautiful doll, the one that came at Christmas... more...

WISTARIA TERRACE The house where Mary Gray was born and grew towards womanhood was one of a squat line of mean little houses that hid themselves behind a great church. The roadway in front of the houses led only to the back entrance of the church. Over against the windows was the playground of the church schools, surrounded by a high wall that shut away field and sky from the front rooms of Wistaria... more...

HEADSTRONG AND HEADLONG Far from any house or hut, in the depth of dreary moor-land, a road, unfenced and almost unformed, descends to a rapid river. The crossing is called the "Seven Corpse Ford," because a large party of farmers, riding homeward from Middleton, banded together and perhaps well primed through fear of a famous highwayman, came down to this place on a foggy evening, after heavy... more...

THE HOMESTEAD AND THE RACE The coast line of the south of Norway is very irregular. This is the work of the mountains and rivers. The former end in hillocks and headlands, off which often lie islands; the latter have dug out valleys and end in fjords or smaller inlets. In one of these inlets, known as "Kroken" (the nook), lies the homestead. The original name of the place was Krokskogen. In the... more...

CHAP. I. Mary, the heroine of this fiction, was the daughter of Edward, who married Eliza, a gentle, fashionable girl, with a kind of indolence in her temper, which might be termed negative good-nature: her virtues, indeed, were all of that stamp. She carefully attended to the shews of things, and her opinions, I should have said prejudices, were such as the generality approved of. She was educated... more...

FLYING MACHINES   Early Attempts at Flight—The Dirigible—Professor Langley's  Experiment—The Wright Brothers—Count Zeppelin—Recent Aeroplane  Records. It is hard to determine when men first essayed the attempt to fly. In myth, legend and tradition we find allusions to aerial flight and from the very dawn of authentic history, philosophers, poets, and writers have made allusion to... more...