Fiction Books

CHAPTER I. A DEPARTURE. "Richard, you will keep from drink, will you not, dear?" and the speaker, in order to make her pleading irresistible, kissed the one to whom these words were addressed again and again; and, as with a hand upon each shoulder, she looked lovingly into his eyes, there was an added pathos which, to a man of Richard Ashton's sympathetic and sensitive nature, was all... more...

The Old Willow-tree 1 There are many kinds of willows and they are so unlike that you would hardly believe them to be relations. There are some so small and wretched that they creep along the ground. They live on the heath, or high up in the mountains, or in the cold arctic regions. In the winter, they are quite hidden under the snow; in the summer, they just poke up their noses above the tops of the... more...

here is a land where a man, to live, must be a man. It is a land of granite and marble and porphyry and gold—and a man's strength must be as the strength of the primeval hills. It is a land of oaks and cedars and pines—and a man's mental grace must be as the grace of the untamed trees. It is a land of far-arched and unstained skies, where the wind sweeps free and untainted, and the... more...

PREFACE. In its original form this essay was the dissertation submitted for a doctorate in philosophy conferred by Yale University in 1908. When first projected it was the writer's purpose to take up the subject of English witchcraft under certain general political and social aspects. It was not long, however, before he began to feel that preliminary to such a treatment there was necessary a... more...

The moon was high in the sky. The wind was laid. So silent was the vast stretch of mountain wilderness, aglint with the dew, that the tinkle of a rill far below in the black abyss seemed less a sound than an evidence of the pervasive quietude, since so slight a thing, so distant, could compass so keen a vibration. For an hour or more the three men who lurked in the shadow of a crag in the narrow... more...

THE HOUSEHOLD WRECK. 'To be weak,' we need not the great archangel's voice to tell us, 'is to be miserable.' All weakness is suffering and humiliation, no matter for its mode or its subject. Beyond all other weakness, therefore, and by a sad prerogative, as more miserable than what is most miserable in all, that capital weakness of man which regards the tenure of his enjoyments... more...

I An Irate Neighbor A tall, slim girl, "half-past sixteen," with serious gray eyes and hair which her friends called auburn, had sat down on the broad red sandstone doorstep of a Prince Edward Island farmhouse one ripe afternoon in August, firmly resolved to construe so many lines of Virgil. But an August afternoon, with blue hazes scarfing the harvest slopes, little winds whispering elfishly... more...

CHAPTER I A  creaking complaint of loose and rattling boards rose under the old mountaineer's brogans as he stepped from the threshold to the porch. His eyes, searching the wooded mountain-side, held at first only that penetration which born woodsmen share with the hawk and ferret, but presently they kindled into irascibility as well. He raised his voice in a loud whoop that went skittering off... more...

CHAPTER I: PRELIMINARY Since it was the British complications with Persia which mainly furnished what pretext there was for the invasion of Afghanistan by an Anglo-Indian army in 1839, some brief recital is necessary of the relations between Great Britain and Persia prior to that aggression. By a treaty, concluded between England and Persia in 1814, the former state bound itself, in case of the... more...

CANADA, 1882. "Are hearts here strong enough to found  A glorious people's sway?"Ask of our rivers as they boundFrom hill to plain, or ocean-sound,  If they are strong to-day?If weakness in their floods be found,  Then may ye answer "Nay!" "Is union yours? may foeman's might  Your love ne'er break or chain?"Go see if o'er our land the flightOf Spring... more...