Fiction Books

I. LOOKING INWARD. It is my habit to give an account to myself of the characters I meet with: can I give any true account of my own? I am a bachelor, without domestic distractions of any sort, and have all my life been an attentive companion to myself, flattering my nature agreeably on plausible occasions, reviling it rather bitterly when it mortified me, and in general remembering its doings and... more...

IMPRESSIONS AND COMMENTS July 24, 1912.—I looked out from my room about ten o'clock at night. Almost below the open window a young woman was clinging to the flat wall for support, with occasional floundering movements towards the attainment of a firmer balance. In the dim light she seemed decently dressed in black; her handkerchief was in her hand; she had evidently been sick. Every few moments... more...

DEAD MEN'S DUST.You don't buy poetry. (Neither do I.)Why?You cannot afford it? Bosh! you spend Editions de luxeon a thirsty friend.You can buy any one of the poetry bunchFor the price you pay for a business lunch.Don't you suppose that a hungry head,Like an empty stomach, ought to be fed?Looking into myself, I find this true,So I hardly can figure it false in you.And you... more...

TO THE PUBLIC. The papers which are herewith submitted to you for your perusal and consideration, were delivered into my hands by Mr. Berl Trout. The papers will speak for themselves, but Mr. Trout now being dead I feel called upon to say a word concerning him. Mr. Berl Trout was Secretary of State in the Imperium In Imperio, from the day of its organization until the hour of his sad death. He was,... more...

Over the cabin ’phone, Ann’s voice was crisp with anger. “Mr. Lord, I must see you at once.” “Of course, Ann.” Lord tried not to sound uncordial. It was all part of a trade agent’s job, to listen to the recommendations and complaints of the teacher. But an interview with Ann Howard was always so arduous, so stiff with unrelieved righteousness. “I should be free until—” “Can you... more...

The following performance, as the title imports, was originally composed in the Welch language. Its style is elegant and pure. And if the translator has not, as many of his brethren have done, suffered the spirit of the original totally to evaporate, he apprehends it will be found to contain much novelty of conception, much classical taste, and great spirit and beauty in the execution. It appears under... more...

THE OLD MAN One afternoon in the late autumn a well-dressed old man was walking slowly down the street. He appeared to be returning home from a walk, for his buckle-shoes, which followed a fashion long since out of date, were covered with dust. Under his arm he carried a long, gold-headed cane; his dark eyes, in which the whole of his long-lost youth seemed to have centred, and which contrasted... more...

NATIONALITY OR COSMOPOLITANISM As one of those who believe that the literature of a country is for ever creating a new soul among its people, I do not like to think that literature with us must follow an inexorable law of sequence, and gain a spiritual character only after the bodily passions have grown weary and exhausted themselves. In the essay called The Autumn of the Body, Mr. Yeats seems to... more...

I. A PRINCE OF COURT PAINTERS EXTRACTS FROM AN OLD FRENCH JOURNAL Valenciennes, September 1701. [5] They have been renovating my father's large workroom. That delightful, tumble-down old place has lost its moss-grown tiles and the green weather-stains we have known all our lives on the high whitewashed wall, opposite which we sit, in the little sculptor's yard, for the coolness, in... more...

THE RESTORATION OF THE EASY CHAIR BY WAY OF INTRODUCTION It is not generally known that after forty-two years of constant use the aged and honored movable which now again finds itself put back in its old place in the rear of Harper's Magazine was stored in the warehouse of a certain safety-deposit company, in the winter of 1892. The event which had then vacated the chair is still so near as to be... more...