Fiction Books

CHAPTER I. Departure from Vienna—Scene on board the steamer—Hainburg—Presburg—The “Coronation-mount”—Pesth—Ofen—The steamer Galata—Mohäcs—The fortress Peterwardein—Discomfort and bad management on board the steamer—Semlin—Belgrade—Pancsova—Austrian soldiers—The rock Babakay—Drenkova—Falls of the Danube—Alt-Orsova—The “Iron... more...

CHAPTER I AUNT HARRIET HAS A COUGH When this story begins, Elizabeth Ann, who is the heroine of it, was a little girl of nine, who lived with her Great-aunt Harriet in a medium- sized city in a medium-sized State in the middle of this country; and that's all you need to know about the place, for it's not the important thing in the story; and anyhow you know all about it because it was... more...

CHAPTER I KATHERINE HEARS THE SLY STEP OF DEATH AT THE CEDARS The night of his grandfather's mysterious death at the Cedars, Bobby Blackburn was, at least until midnight, in New York. He was held there by the unhealthy habits and companionships which recently had angered his grandfather to the point of threatening a disciplinary change in his will. As a consequence he drifted into that strange... more...

CHAPTER I.   I have now come to the farmer's life, with which I am exceedingly delighted, and which seems to me to belong especially to the life of a wise man. CICERO. Weary of boarding at seashore and mountain, tired of traveling in search of comfort, hating hotel life, I visited a country friend at Gooseville, Conn. (an assumed name for Foxboro, Mass.), and passed three happy weeks in her... more...

AN ARKANSAS PLANTER. Lying along the Arkansas River, a few miles below Little Rock, there is a broad strip of country that was once the domain of a lordly race of men. They were not lordly in the sense of conquest; no rusting armor hung upon their walls; no ancient blood-stains blotched their stairways—there were no skeletons in dungeons deep beneath the banquet hall. But in their own opinion they... more...

CANTO I.PRIMEVAL DAYS. Hear a song of ancient story, Of a city on a hillside, Of the valleys all about it, Of the forest and the wildwood, Of the deer that stalked within it, And the birds that flew above it, And the wolves and bears around it, Sole possessors and retainers Of the silent territory. Hear the song of its high mountains Of its gushing rills and streamlets, Of its leaping, rolling rivers,... more...

Janet Hardy stirred sleepily as the alarm clock sounded its lusty summons and it was only after a real effort that she managed to reach out and shut off the insistent clock. It was so early that shadows of the night still lurked in the corners and Janet squinted at the clock through sleep-clogged eyes. It was four-forty a.m. Sitting up in bed she looked across the room where Helen Thorne was deep in... more...

MOONLIGHT ON THE RIO GILA. Along the eastern bank a small Indian canoe, containing a single individual, was stealing its way—"hugging" the shore so as to take advantage of the narrow band of shadow that followed the winding of the stream. There were no trees on either side of the river, but this portion was walled in by bluffs, rising from three or four to fully twenty feet in height. The... more...

Some men deliberately don a character in early youth as others don a mask before going to an opera ball. They select it not without some care, being guided in their choice by the opinion they have formed of the world's mind and manner of proceeding. In the privacy of the dressing-room, the candles being lighted and the mirror adjusted at the best angle for a view of self, they assume their... more...

PREFACE In the beginning was the land. It drew human life to our rich area of Fairfax County, and sustained us for centuries before we became so self-conscious about it as to make household language of words such as ecology and bio-degradable waste. This is where we are at, however, and thus it is thoroughly appropriate that the publication of historical research reports in this format, a new program... more...