Fiction Books

CHAPTER I—SOMETHING TO BE DONE He was a very sick white man.  He rode pick-a-back on a woolly-headed, black-skinned savage, the lobes of whose ears had been pierced and stretched until one had torn out, while the other carried a circular block of carved wood three inches in diameter.  The torn ear had been pierced again, but this time not so ambitiously, for the hole accommodated no more than a... more...

CHAPTER FIRST. Wiser Raymondus, in his closet pent,Laughs at such danger and adventurementWhen half his lands are spent in golden smoke,And now his second hopeful glasse is broke,But yet, if haply his third furnace hold,Devoteth all his pots and pans to gold.* * The author cannot remember where these lines are to be found: perhaps in Bishop Hall's Satires. [They occur in Book iv. Satire iii.]... more...

THE DIVERTING HISTORY OF JOHN GILPIN: Showing how he went farther than he intended, and came safe home again.   John Gilpin was a citizen Of credit and renown, A train-band captain eke was he, Of famous London town. John Gilpin's spouse said to her dear, "Though wedded we have been These twice ten tedious years, yet we No holiday have seen. "To-morrow is our wedding-day, And we will then... more...

wenty years had left no trace inside Sam Kee's little shop on Mott Street. There were the same dusty jars of ginseng root and tigers' whiskers, the same little bronze Buddahs, the same gim-cracks mixed with fine jade. Edith Williams gave a little murmur of pleasure as the door shut behind them. "Mark," she said, "it hasn't changed! It doesn't look as if a thing had been... more...

CHAPTER I THE MAN IN SECTION THIRTEENBARBARA THURSTON awakened with a violent start."Wha—a-at is it?" she muttered, then opened her eyes wide. In the darkness of the Pullman berth she could see nothing at all save a faint perpendicular line of light at the edges of the curtains that enclosed the section. "I—I wonder what made me wake up so suddenly?" Barbara put out a groping hand.... more...

“And that,” said Colonel Fennister glumly, “appears to be that.” The pile of glowing coals that had been Storage Shed Number One was still sending up tongues of flame, but they were nothing compared with what they’d been half an hour before. “The smoke smells good, anyway,” said Major Grodski, sniffing appreciatively. The colonel turned his head and glowered at his adjutant. “There are... more...

PREFACE. APPEARING before the Public as a translator of the Oracles of God, it would ill become me to deprecate the severity of criticism, when I most cordially desire the intelligent and learned of my brethren to point out my mistakes for correction, and, in love and in the spirit of meekness, to smite me friendly. Should, however, the shafts of malignity, and the weapons not of our warfare, be... more...

CHAPTER I. Upon one of those hot, sultry summer afternoons that so often prevail about the banks of the Bosphorus, the sun was fast sinking towards its western course, and gilding as it went, the golden crescents of a thousand minarets, now dancing with fairy feet over the rippling waters of Marmora, now dallying with the spray of the oarsmen's blades, as they pulled the gilded caique of some rich... more...

One thing Man never counted on to take along into space with him was the Eternal Triangle—especially a true-blue triangle like this! "What's the matter, darling?" James asked anxiously. "Don't you like the planet?" "Oh, I love the planet," Phyllis said. "It's beautiful." It was. The blue—really blue—grass, blue-violet shrubbery and, loveliest of all,... more...

They ran through the streets of the seaport town;They peered from the decks of the ships that lay:The cold sea-fog that came whitening downWas never as cold or white as they. "Ho, Starbuck and Pinckney and Tenterden!  Run for your shallops, gather your men,  Scatter your boats on the lower bay." Good cause for fear! In the thick middayThe hulk that lay by the rotting pier,Filled with the... more...