Fiction Books

THE MEETING The soft mantle of a southern twilight had fallen upon land and sea, and the heart of the Palermitans was glad. Out they trooped into the scented darkness, strolling along the promenade in little groups, listening to the band, drinking in the cool night breeze from the sea, singling out friends, laughing, talking, flirting, and passing on. A long line of carriages was drawn up along the... more...

I. After the death of Judge Kilburn his daughter came back to America. They had been eleven winters in Rome, always meaning to return, but staying on from year to year, as people do who have nothing definite to call them home. Toward the last Miss Kilburn tacitly gave up the expectation of getting her father away, though they both continued to say that they were going to take passage as soon as the... more...

CHAPTER I MR. PHINEAS DUGE Virginia, when she had torn herself away from the bosom of her sorrowing but excited family, and boarded the car which passed only once a day through the tiny village in Massachusetts, where all her life had been spent, had felt herself, notwithstanding her nineteen years, a person of consequence and dignity. Virginia, when four hours later she followed a tall footman in... more...

CHAPTER I. Previous to the close of the fifteenth century, the direction taken by European commerce remained unchanged. America had not been discovered, and the only known route to India was by land. Venice, enthroned by her central position as queen of commerce, compelled the nations of Europe and Asia to convey to her port all the riches of the world. One single city, Bruges in Flanders, serving as... more...

THE PATRICIANS. It was in the year 1568, on the 17th of May, old style, that Althea, the widow of Netz of Bogendorf, sate in her apartments at Schweidnitz. The mourning veil still flowed about her pale beautiful face, while her blue eyes gazed through their tears with melancholy tenderness on the only pledge of a brief yet happy union, the four years' old Henry, who sate upon her knees, and in... more...

The Ability to communicate ideas from one individual to another," said a professor of sociology to his class, "is the principal distinction between human beings and their brute forbears. The increase and refinement of this ability to communicate is an index of the degree of civilization of a people. The more civilized a people, the more perfect their ability to communicate, especially under... more...

I. PRIMEVAL IRELAND. "It seems to be certain," says the Abbé McGeoghehan, "that Ireland continued uninhabited from the Creation to the Deluge." With this assurance to help us on our onward way I may venture to supplement it by saying that little is known about the first, or even about the second, third, and fourth succession of settlers in Ireland. At what precise period what is known... more...

I Less than a hundred miles from the city of Gotham, across broad green fields, dotted into squares and oblong valleys by full-leafed maple, and elm, and mulberry, was the village of Brookfield. A hundred years of expansion in the surrounding land had acted inversely with the little hamlet, and had pinched it into a hermitical isolation. The Brookfieldians had discovered a huge beetle in the amber of... more...

WhenBetsinda held the RoseAnd the Ring decked Giglio’s fingerThackeray! ’twas sport to lingerWith thy wise, gay-hearted prose.Books were merry, goodness knows!When Betsinda held the Rose.Who but foggy drudglings dozeWhile Rob Gilpin toasts thy witches,While the Ghost waylays thy breeches,Ingoldsby? Such tales as thoseExorcised our peevish woesWhen Betsinda held the Rose.Realism, thou specious... more...

It is certainly not the function of a romance to relate, with the exactness of a House journal, the proceedings of a Legislature. Somebody has likened the state-house to pioneer Kentucky, a dark and bloody ground over which the battles of selfish interests ebbed and flowed,—no place for an innocent and unselfish bystander like Mr. Crewe, who desired only to make of his State an Utopia; whose measures... more...