Fiction Books

CHAPTER I ALL ABOUT GADABOUT   It was dark and still and four o'clock on a summer morning. The few cottages clustering about a landing upon a Virginia river were, for the most part, sleeping soundly, though here and there a flickering light told of some awakening home. Down close by the landing was one little house wide awake. Its windows were aglow; lights moved about; and busy figures passed... more...

CHAPTER I Miss Katherine Wayneworth Jones was bunkered. Having been bunkered many times in the past, and knowing that she would be bunkered upon many occasions in the future, Miss Jones was not disposed to take a tragic view of the situation. The little white ball was all too secure down there in the sand; as she had played her first nine, and at least paid her respects to the game, she could now scale... more...

At fifteen, I became a resident in a country village, more than a hundred miles from home. The morning after my arrival—a September morning, but warm and bright as any in July—I rambled into a wood of oaks, with a few walnut-trees intermixed, forming the closest shade above my head. The ground was rocky, uneven, overgrown with bushes and clumps of young saplings, and traversed only by... more...

"But I know what I need. I need you." There was a dogged tone in Elijah Berl's voice that was almost sullenly insistent. "I have given you all that I have to give, Elijah. You don't need me. What you need is money, and that's what I haven't got." "And I say again that I have thought of this for five years. Ever since I left New England. I have not been alone, I... more...

I. A CONFESSION OF FAITH. The Circus in Rome was thronged with an enormous crowd of persons on a day in June, about two thousand years ago. One hundred thousand men and women sat on its tiers of white marble seats, under the open sky and witnessed a gladiatorial contest in the arena, beneath. At the western end of the oval amphitheatre was the Emperor's box, flanked with tall Corinthian pillars,... more...

THE JOY OF ANTICIPATION Elk Creek Valley was a blue and golden place that mid-summer morning in the Big Horn Country. It seemed like a joyous secret tucked away among the mountains, whose hazy, far-away summits were as blue as the sky above them. The lower ranges, too, were blue from purple haze and gray-green sagebrush, while the bare, brown foot-hills tumbling about their feet were golden in the... more...

CHAPTER I THE SYSTEM Toward the close of a May afternoon in the year 1884, Miss Priscilla Batte, having learned by heart the lesson in physical geography she would teach her senior class on the morrow, stood feeding her canary on the little square porch of the Dinwiddie Academy for Young Ladies. The day had been hot, and the fitful wind, which had risen in the direction of the river, was just beginning... more...

PREFACE This volume is the result of some studies that I felt impelled to make when, about three years ago, certain sections of the labor movement in the United States were discussing vehemently political action versus direct action. A number of causes combined to produce a serious and critical controversy. The Industrial Workers of the World were carrying on a lively agitation that later culminated in... more...

THE BEGINNING Kenneth Gwynne was five years old when his father ran away withRachel Carter, a widow. This was in the spring of 1812, and inthe fall his mother died. His grandparents brought him up to hateRachel Carter, an evil woman. She was his mother's friend and she had slain her with the viper's tooth. From the day that his questioning intelligence seized upon the truth that had been so... more...

Chapter I. Virgie and the Benighted Traveler. "Virgie, I shall have to give up the race." "Papa!" "My strength is failing rapidly. It was all that I could do to creep home to-night. My trembling limbs, my labored breathing, and this dreadful cough, all warn me that I must set my house in order, and make provision for your future." It was an apparently old man who spoke thus, and... more...