Fiction Books

Chapter 1. A Grateful People On the 20th of August, 1672, the city of the Hague, always so lively, so neat, and so trim that one might believe every day to be Sunday, with its shady park, with its tall trees, spreading over its Gothic houses, with its canals like large mirrors, in which its steeples and its almost Eastern cupolas are reflected,—the city of the Hague, the capital of the Seven United... more...

O! I have climbed high, and my reward is small. Here I stand, with wearied knees, earth, indeed, at a dizzy depth below, but heaven far, far beyond me still. O that I could soar up into the very zenith, where man never breathed, nor eagle ever flew, and where the ethereal azure melts away from the eye, and appears only a deepened shade of nothingness! And yet I shiver at that cold and solitary thought.... more...

PART I. THE THEORY OF ETHICS. CHAPTER I. PRELIMINARY VIEW OF ETHICAL QUESTIONS. I.—The ETHICAL STANDARD. Summary of views. II.—PSYCHOLOGICAL questions. 1. The Moral Faculty. 2. The Freedom of the Will; the sources of Disinterested conduct. III.—The BONUM, SUMMUM BONUM, or Happiness. IV.—The CLASSIFICATION OF DUTIES, and the Moral Code. V.—Relationship of Ethics to POLITICS. VI.—Relation to... more...

"There you are!" Judson Taylor, the eccentric physics prof, pulled a metallic object out of his pocket and laid it on the table between us. The object was a solid chunk of some kind of metal, judging from its bright silver color, about the size and shape of a pocket knife. I looked at it stupidly and said, "Where are we?" I am Bill Halley. Some of the adolescent undergraduate brats at... more...

CHAPTER I. FALLING IN LOVE. [Illustration: LILLIE.] "Who is that beautiful creature?" said John Seymour, as a light, sylph-like form tripped up the steps of the veranda of the hotel where he was lounging away his summer vacation. "That! Why, don't you know, man? That is the celebrated, the divine Lillie Ellis, the most adroit 'fisher of men' that has been seen in our... more...

THE OCTOBER LAND I sat on the ground with my youthful legs tucked under me, and the bridle rein of El Mahdi over my arm, while I hammered a copper rivet into my broken stirrup strap. A little farther down the ridge Jud was idly swinging his great driving whip in long, snaky coils, flicking now a dry branch, and now a red autumn leaf from the clay road. The slim buckskin lash would dart out hissing,... more...

There are not many who will remember him as Thomas Jefferson Brown. For ten years he had been mildly ashamed of himself, and out of respect for people who were dead, and for a dozen or so who were living, he had the good taste to drop his last name. The fact that it was only Brown didn't matter. "Tack Thomas Jefferson to Brown," he said, "and you've got a name that sticks!" It... more...

CHAPTER I. On the plains, midway between Cheyenne and the Black Hills, a train had halted for a noonday feed. Not a railway train, mind you, but a line of those white-covered vehicles drawn by strong-limbed mules, which are most properly styled "prairie schooners." There were four wagons of this type, and they had been drawn in a circle about a camp-fire, over which was roasting a savory haunch... more...

A YOUNG CARPET-BAGGER. "Twenty-five cents to begin the world with!" reflected Frank Kavanagh, drawing from his vest-pocket two ten-cent pieces of currency and a nickel. "That isn't much, but it will have to do." The speaker, a boy of fifteen, was sitting on a bench in City-Hall Park. He was apparently about fifteen years old, with a face not handsome, but frank and good-humored,... more...

CHAPTER I. THE CITY OF WYTHBURN. Tar-ry woo', tar-ry woo',Tar-ry woo' is ill to spin:Card it weel, card it weel,Card it weel ere you begin.Old Ballad. The city of Wythburn stood in a narrow valley at the foot of Lauvellen, and at the head of Bracken Water. It was a little but populous village, inhabited chiefly by sheep farmers, whose flocks grazed on the neighboring hills. It contained... more...