Fiction Books

CHAPTER I I tell you,gentlemen, it's a rotten piece of business to be standing beside an old friend's open grave-simply disgusting. You stand with your feet planted in the upturned earth, and twirl your moustache and look stupid, while you feel like crying the soul out of your body. He was dead--there was no use wishing he weren't. In him was lost the greatest genius for concocting and... more...

Amos 1:1 The words of Amos, who was among the herdsmen of Tekoa, which he saw concerning Israel in the days of Uzziah king of Judah, and in the days of Jeroboam the son of Joash king of Israel, two years before the earthquake. 1:2 He said:"Yahweh will roar from Zion,and utter his voice from Jerusalem;and the pastures of the shepherds will mourn,and the top of Carmel will wither."1:3 Thus says... more...

CHAPTER IA RESCUE BY MOONLIGHT "Help! Help!" The cry rang out despairingly over the almost-deserted beach at Golden Gate Park. Jumping up so suddenly that the checker-board went in one direction, the table in another, while the checkers rolled to every corner of the little volunteer life-saving station house, Eric Swift made a leap for the door. Quick as he was to reach the boat, he was none... more...

I am not naturally superstitious. The Saharaman is. He has many strange beliefs. When one is at close quarters with him, sees him day by day in his home, the great desert, listens to his dramatic tales of desert lights, visions, sounds, one's common-sense is apt to be shaken on its throne. Perhaps it is the influence of the solitude and the wide spaces, of those far horizons of the Sahara where... more...

By accident Bobby discovered the rocket was about to be shot to the Moon. Naturally he wanted to go along. But could he smuggle himself aboard?Illustrated by Lloyd RognanDad had already gone when Bobby got up. This disappointed Bobby a little but then he remembered—this was the big day. Naturally Dad would get over to the project early. And at four o'clock— Bobby shivered deliciously at the... more...

CHAPTER I. THE ART OF STORY-TELLING. The art of story-telling — Unity of human imagination — Definition of Fairy Tales — Variable value of Tradition — Story-telling and the story-teller among various peoples — The connection of folk-tales with folk-songs — Continuity of Tradition — Need of accuracy and good faith in reporting stories. The art of story-telling has been cultivated in all... more...

INTRODUCTION. This translation of Dante's Convito—the first in English—is from the hand of a lady whose enthusiasm for the genius of Dante has made it a chief pleasure of her life to dwell on it by translating, not his Divine Comedy only, but also the whole body of his other works. Among those works the Vita Nuova and the Convito have a distinct place, as leading up to the great masterpiece.... more...

I THE ENGLISH IDEA OF LAW My object in the lectures upon which this work is based was to give some notion of the problems of the time (in this country, of course, particularly) which are confronting legislators primarily, political parties in the second place, but finally all good citizens. The treatment was as untechnical as possible. The lectures themselves were for men who meant to go into business,... more...

It is fully fifteen, if not twenty, years since my father commenced the composition of an historical romance on the subject of Pausanias, the Spartan Regent. Circumstances, which need not here be recorded, compelled him to lay aside the work thus begun. But the subject continued to haunt his imagination and occupy his thoughts. He detected in it singular opportunities for effective exercise of the... more...

Breakfasts at High Noon. A VERY SWELL REPAST FOR A SWAGGER SET. By the operation of one of those laws of occult force, the power of which we feel while we are totally ignorant of its rules, we fix upon the noonday as the time for some of our chief social functions. As a matter of fact we are at our best at this time of the day, both physically and mentally; and we naturally choose it for our special... more...