Fiction Books

THE INTRODUCTION The Arabian Nights was introduced to Europe in a French translation by Antoine Galland in 1704, and rapidly attained a unique popularity. There are even accounts of the translator being roused from sleep by bands of young men under his windows in Paris, importuning him to tell them another story. The learned world at first refused to believe that M. Galland had not invented the tales.... more...

FOREWORD It was inevitable that in my efforts to write romantic history of the great West I should at length come to the story of a feud. For long I have steered clear of this rock. But at last I have reached it and must go over it, driven by my desire to chronicle the stirring events of pioneer days. Even to-day it is not possible to travel into the remote corners of the West without seeing the lives... more...

Not far from Westminster Abbey, as most of our readers know well, stands the gorgeous pile which Mr. Barry has designed, and for which, in a pecuniary sense, a patient public has been rather handsomely bled.  Few are there who have looked at that pile from the Bridge—or from the numerous steamers which throng the river—or loitered round it on a summer’s eve, without feeling some little reverence... more...

THE LADY OF THE BARGE The master of the barge Arabella sat in the stern of his craft with his right arm leaning on the tiller. A desultory conversation with the mate of a schooner, who was hanging over the side of his craft a few yards off, had come to a conclusion owing to a difference of opinion on the subject of religion. The skipper had argued so warmly that he almost fancied he must have inherited... more...

For a long time affairs at Crotona ran along in this manner and Eumolpus, flushed with success so far forgot the former state of his fortunes that he even bragged to his followers that no one could hold out against any wish of his, and that any member of his suite who committed a crime in that city would, through the influence of his friends, get off unpunished. But, although I daily crammed my bloated... more...

Being the youngest of all his children, I had not the privilege of knowing my father in his best and most joyous years, nor of remembering Greta Hall when the happiness of its circle was unbroken. Much labor and anxiety, and many sorrows, had passed over him; and although his natural buoyancy of spirit had not departed, it was greatly subdued, and I chiefly remember its gradual diminution from year to... more...

The hooded skunk, Mephitis macroura Lichtenstein, can be distinguished from the only other species in the genus, Mephitis mephitis Schreber, by the larger tympanic bullae, in the white-backed color phase by having some black hairs mixed with the white hairs of the back, and in the black-backed phase by having the two white stripes widely separated and on the sides of the animal instead of narrowly... more...

CHAPTER I A MONKEY TRICK "I think—" began a tall, slenderly-built lad of sixteen, speaking in a somewhat indolent way; then suddenly he paused to look down through the trees to where the river gleamed below. "What's on your mind now, Rand?" his companion queried, a boy of about the same age, nearly as tall, but more stoutly built, and as light in complexion as the other was dark.... more...

INTRODUCTION. Some years ago I was at work in Salzburg: in the library among the old records, and in the Museum of Roman antiquities. My studies were principally concerned with the fifth century: the time when the Germanic tribes invaded these regions, the Roman garrisons retiring with or without resistance, while many settlers remained in the land. Peasants, trades-people, mechanics, would not forsake... more...

THE MOON STRICKEN It so fell that one dark evening in the month of June I was belated in the Bernese Oberland. Dusk overtook me toiling along the great Chamounix Road, and in the heart of a most desolate gorge, whose towering snow-flung walls seemed—as the day sucked inwards to a point secret as a leech's mouth—to close about me like a monstrous amphitheatre of ghosts. The rutted road, dipping... more...