Fiction Books

Chapter I "Magnifique!" ejaculated the Countess de Coude, beneath her breath. "Eh?" questioned the count, turning toward his young wife. "What is it that is magnificent?" and the count bent his eyes in various directions in quest of the object of her admiration. "Oh, nothing at all, my dear," replied the countess, a slight flush momentarily coloring her already pink... more...

CHAPTER I DINNER TIME As The Aloha rode gently to her buoy among the crafts in the harbour, St. George longed to proclaim in the megaphone's monstrous parody upon capital letters: "Cat-boats and house-boats and yawls, look here. You're bound to observe that this is my steam yacht. I own her—do you see? She belongs to me, St. George, who never before owned so much as a piece of... more...

CHAPTER I WHAT'S IN HEREDITY Honora Leffingwell is the original name of our heroine. She was born in the last quarter of the Nineteenth Century, at Nice, in France, and she spent the early years of her life in St. Louis, a somewhat conservative old city on the banks of the Mississippi River. Her father was Randolph Leffingwell, and he died in the early flower of his manhood, while filling with a... more...

I Miss Robinson had first seen Wyndham and fallen in love with him on the day that he appeared in the road as a neighbour and set up his studio there. But that was years before, and she had never made his acquaintance. He was the Prince Charming of the romances, handsome, of knightly bearing, with a winning smile on his frank face. From her magic window in the big corner house where the road branched... more...

CHAPTER I The Puce Dressing-gown The peculiar angle of the earth's axis to the plane of the ecliptic--that angle which is chiefly responsible for our geography and therefore for our history--had caused the phenomenon known in London as summer. The whizzing globe happened to have turned its most civilized face away from the sun, thus producing night in Selwood Terrace, South Kensington. In No. 91... more...

The lights that wink across the sodden moor Like phosphorescent eyes that beckon men To risk fell footsteps in the treacherous fen, And sink in loathsome muck, without a spoor— What ghosts of former days, what dread allure, Abides within this subterranean den? Or, reaching out, snares victims to its ken, With wraith-like fingers, to a peril sure? 'Tis told that evil things lurk out of sight With... more...

PREFACE By this edition of HAMLET I hope to help the student of Shakspere to understand the play—and first of all Hamlet himself, whose spiritual and moral nature are the real material of the tragedy, to which every other interest of the play is subservient. But while mainly attempting, from the words and behaviour Shakspere has given him, to explain the man, I have cast what light I could upon... more...

BIG GAME. ... The first shot was just a rib too far back, and though it staggered him, he didn't stop to it. Out tinkled cartridge number one and in went a second, and "cluck" said the breech-block. And then as he slewed round, I got the next bullet home, bang behind the shoulder. That did it. He tucked down his long Roman nose, and went heels over tip like a shot rabbit; and when a big... more...

Chapter One The Physical Basis if Metaphysics The Hindu system of physics, on which the metaphysical thought of the East is based, does not in its beginnings differ widely from the latest physics of the West; but it goes so much farther that our physics is soon lost sight of and forgotten. The Hindu conception of the material universe, taken from the Upanishads and some open teaching, will serve for an... more...

CHAPTER 1. OLD WAYS AND NEW Progress is like the insidious change from youth to old age, except that progress does not mean decay. The change that is almost imperceptible and yet inexorable is much the same, however. You will see a community apparently changeless as the years pass by; and yet, when the years have gone and you look back, there has been a change. It is not the same. It never will be the... more...