Fiction Books

CHAPTER I Birth and parentage—studies under Zachow at Halle—Hamburg—friendship and duel with Mattheson—Almira—departure for Italy. The name of Handel suggests to most people the sound of music unsurpassed in massiveness and dignity, and the familiar portraits of the composer present us with a man whose external appearance was no less massive and dignified than his music. Countless anecdotes... more...

TWO GIRLS OF NORMANDY In all the countryside of Evreux, nay in all the beauteous old-time Normandy of the period of 1789, there were no lovelier filles du peuple than Henriette and Louise Girard. Their romantic story was often whispered by country gossips. In infancy foundlings on the church steps of Notre Dame, then brought to this quiet Norman backwater by the Girards and raised as sisters, they had... more...

It was the time of sunrise in Ceyce, the White City, placidly beautiful capital of Maccadon, the University World of the Hub. In the Colonial School's sprawling five-mile complex of buildings and tropical parks, the second student shift was headed for breakfast, while a larger part of the fourth shift moved at a more leisurely rate toward their bunks. The school's organized activities were... more...

INDUSTRIAL DESIGNING. A great many women have, or think they have, a taste for art. They can make a pretty sketch, or draw a landscape quite fairly, and so they think they will "take up" art as a profession. And nearly all of them fail of success. The trouble seems to be that they lack originality; they are mere copyists, and too often very poor reproducers of the things they copy. One branch... more...

CHAPTER I. THE MESSENGER Peter Blood, bachelor of medicine and several other things besides, smoked a pipe and tended the geraniums boxed on the sill of his window above Water Lane in the town of Bridgewater. Sternly disapproving eyes considered him from a window opposite, but went disregarded. Mr. Blood's attention was divided between his task and the stream of humanity in the narrow street... more...

Lamentations 1:1 How the city sits solitary, that was full of people!She has become as a widow, who was great among the nations!She who was a princess among the provinces is become tributary!1:2She weeps sore in the night, and her tears are on her cheeks;among all her lovers she has none to comfort her:All her friends have dealt treacherously with her; they are become her enemies.1:3Judah is gone into... more...

INTRODUCTION. On September 28th, 1730, a rebellion burst forth in Stambul against Sultan Achmed III., whose cowardly hesitation to take the field against the advancing hosts of the victorious Persians had revolted both the army and the people. The rebellion began in the camp of the Janissaries, and the ringleader was one Halil Patrona, a poor Albanian sailor-man, who after plying for a time the trade... more...

It is very seldom that mere ordinary people like John and myself secure ancestral halls for the summer. A colonial mansion, a hereditary estate, I would say a haunted house, and reach the height of romantic felicity—but that would be asking too much of fate! Still I will proudly declare that there is something queer about it. Else, why should it be let so cheaply? And why have stood so long... more...

CHAPTER I DUKE CASIMIR RIDES LATE Well do I, Hugo Gottfried, remember the night of snow and moonlight when first they brought the Little Playmate home. I had been sleeping—a sturdy, well-grown fellow I, ten years or so as to my age—in a stomacher of blanket and a bed-gown my mother had made me before she died at the beginning of the cold weather. Suddenly something awoke me out of my sleep. So, all... more...

This story, the nineteenth and last of the "Aunt Jane" stories, appeared in the Cosmopolitan, July 1910, after the publication of The Land of Long Ago. Its publication in this present volume completes the set of stories told by "Aunt Jane of Kentucky." "I hear there's goin' to be a circus in town next week," said Aunt Jane, "and if it wasn't for the looks of... more...