Fiction Books

CHAPTER I THE FORBIDDEN ROCK A young man and an old one sat in the shade of the willows beside the wide, still river. The glare of a hot August sun failed to penetrate the shelter in which they idled; out upon the slow-gliding river it beat relentlessly, creating a pale, thin vapour that clung close to the shimmering surface and dazzled the eye with an ever-shifting glaze. The air was lifeless, sultry,... more...

MAY 4. How happy I am that I am gone! My dear friend, what a thing is the heart of man! To leave you, from whom I have been inseparable, whom I love so dearly, and yet to feel happy! I know you will forgive me. Have not other attachments been specially appointed by fate to torment a head like mine? Poor Leonora! and yet I was not to blame. Was it my fault, that, whilst the peculiar charms of her sister... more...

HENRY GOWER was dead at sixty-one—the end of a lifelong fraud which never had been suspected, and never would be. With the world, with his acquaintances and neighbors, with his wife and son and daughter, he passed as a generous, warm-hearted, good-natured man, ready at all times to do anything to help anybody, incapable of envy or hatred or meanness. In fact, not once in all his days had he ever... more...

CHAPTER I. MY THIRTY YEARS' INTIMATE ASSOCIATION WITH THE BREWERS For about thirty years I have been closely allied with the brewing industry and was daily brought in contact with the brewers. I have been interested in a number of breweries as a stockholder. I have been intimately associated with many brewers throughout the country. I am therefore thoroughly familiar with the inner history of the... more...

CHAPTER I THE TRAVELER FROM TIBET "Who's there?" I called sharply. I turned and looked across the room. The window had been widely opened when I entered, and a faint fog haze hung in the apartment, seeming to veil the light of the shaded lamp. I watched the closed door intently, expecting every moment to see the knob turn. But nothing happened. "Who's there?" I cried again,... more...

"I'VE been thinking," said I, speaking to my husband, who stood drawing on his gloves. "Have you?" he answered; "then give me the benefit of your thoughts." "That we shall have to give a party. You know we've accepted a number of invitations this winter, and it's but right that we should contribute our share of social entertainment." "I have thought as... more...

Chapter I On the west side of Ellen's father's house was a file of Norway spruce-trees, standing with a sharp pointing of dark boughs towards the north, which gave them an air of expectancy of progress. Every morning Ellen, whose bedroom faced that way, looked out with a firm belief that she would see them on the other side of the stone wall, advanced several paces towards their native land.... more...

CHAPTER I It was a hot July day, set in a sky of unruffled blue, with sharp shadows across road and field, and a wind that had little coolness in it playing languidly over the downland. The long white dusty road kept its undeviating course eastward over hill and dale, through hamlet and town, till it was swallowed up in the mesh-work of ways round London, sixty-three miles away according to the... more...

PREFACE The essay which follows had been printed, and was on the point of being published, when the outbreak of war involved my venture in the general devastation from which we are only now emerging. More than four years of military service lie between me and the studies of which this book is the summary. It was written under one dispensation; it is being published under another. My first impulse,... more...

Chapter I Choosing a King The storm had spent itself, the sea was calm again, and on its smooth surface tossed empty casks and shattered masts,—the monuments of shipwrecked vessels. The stormy petrels had vanished with the tempest, and the flying fish were now making their clumsy leaps from wave to wave,—a sign of fair weather. A brigantine which had outlived the gale was moving slowly over the... more...