Fiction Books

Chapter VII. “Has anything gone wrong?” There was so much of interest and sympathy in her tone, as Joe put the simple question, that John turned and looked into her face. The magic of moonlight softens the hardest features, makes interest look like friendship, and friendship like love; but it can harden too at times, and make a human face look like carved stone. “No, there is nothing wrong,”... 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...

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...

THE FUNERAL Toward the close of the —th Congress I was designated a member of a committee on the part of the House to accompany the remains of the late Senator Thurlow to their last resting-place at the old home in Kentucky. And it might be well to state here that I am quite aware that some of my ungrateful countrymen apply the spiteful term "junket" to a journey of this description. When one... more...

You've heard, I'm sure, about the two Martians who went into a bar, saw a jukebox flashing and glittering, and said to it, "What's a nice girl like you doing in a joint like this?" Well, here's one about two Capellans and a slot-machine....TORYL pointed the small crypterpreter toward the wooden, horseshoe-shaped sign. The sign's legend was carved in bright yellow... more...

THE DUEL I It was eight o'clock in the morning—the time when the officers, the local officials, and the visitors usually took their morning dip in the sea after the hot, stifling night, and then went into the pavilion to drink tea or coffee. Ivan Andreitch Laevsky, a thin, fair young man of twenty-eight, wearing the cap of a clerk in the Ministry of Finance and with slippers on his feet, coming... more...

AUDIENCE AND INTERLOCUTORS. Lieut. John Polkinghorne. R.F.A., of the Battery.Sec. Lieut. Samuel Barham, M.C. R.F.A., of the Battery.Sec. Lieut. Percy Yarrell-Smith. R.F.A., of the BatterySec Lieut. Noel Williams, R.F.A., attached for instruction. But military duties usually restricted the audience to two at a time, though there were three on the night when Barham (Sammy) set his C.O. going with a... more...

WORRIES OF A WINTER WALK The other winter, as I was taking a morning walk down to the East River, I came upon a bit of our motley life, a fact of our piebald civilization, which has perplexed me from time to time, ever since, and which I wish now to leave with the reader, for his or her more thoughtful consideration. The morning was extremely cold. It professed to be sunny, and there was really some... more...

Chapter 1   Sunday, April 5 6:49 a.m.   Alexa Hampton was awakened by a sensation in her chest. The alarm wasn't set to go off for another eleven minutes, but she knew her sleep was finished. Not again! She rolled over and slapped the blue pillowcase. That little sound from her heart and the twinges of angina, that catchall for heart discomfort, was happening more and more now, just as Dr.... more...

I suppose there is no one of us who can honestly deny that he is interested in one way or another in the American short story. Indeed, it is hard to find a man anywhere who does not enjoy telling a good story. But there are some people born with the gift of telling a good story better than others, and of telling it in such a way that a great many people can enjoy its flavor. Most of you are acquainted... more...