Fiction Books

INTRODUCTION When the historian has described the rise and fall of empires and dynasties, and has recounted with care and exactness the details of the great political movements that have changed the map of continents, there remains the question: What was the cause of these revolutions in human society--what were the real motives that were operative in the hearts and minds of the persons in the great... more...

CHAPTER I The Duchess of Newcastle. Mrs. Behn. Mrs. Manley In the many volumes containing the records of the past, the names of few women appear, and the number is still smaller of those who have won fame in art or literature. Sappho, however, has shown that poetic feeling and expression are not denied the sex; Jeanne d'Arc was chosen to free France; Mrs. Somerville excelled in mathematics; Maria... more...

To —— ——. Spring saw my little venture just begun;And then your hospitable message came,Inviting me to taste the strawberriesAt Strawberry Hill. I went. How long I stayed,Urged by dear friends and the restoring breeze,Let me not say; long enough to completeMy rhythmic structure; day by day it grew,And all sweet influences helped its growth.The lawn sloped green and ample till the treesMet on... more...

"Out of the depths, O Lord, out of the depths," begins the most beautiful of the services of our church, and it is out of the depths of my life that I must bring the incidents of this story. I was an unwanted child—unwanted as a girl at all events. Father Dan Donovan, our parish priest, told me all about it. I was born in October. It had been raining heavily all day long. The rain was beating... more...

PART I I It was eleven o'clock in the morning when Mariano Renovales reached the Museo del Prado. Several years had passed since the famous painter had entered it. The dead did not attract him; very interesting they were, very worthy of respect, under the glorious shroud of the centuries, but art was moving along new paths and he could not study there under the false glare of the skylights, where... more...

CHAPTER I. EARLY LIFE. At the earnest solicitation of many dear friends I have consented to leave on record some of the incidents that have fallen under my personal observation during three-score and ten years. My father, Daniel Smith, was a native of Eastern New York, and for many years an approved minister in the Society of Friends. He was a man of ability and influence, of clear perceptions, and... more...

INTRODUCTION. From the inauguration of the movement for woman's emancipation the Bible has been used to hold her in the "divinely ordained sphere," prescribed in the Old and New Testaments. The canon and civil law; church and state; priests and legislators; all political parties and religious denominations have alike taught that woman was made after man, of man, and for man, an inferior... more...

INTRODUCTION Though Southern rural life has necessarily changed since the Civil War, I doubt that there is in the entire South a place where it has changed less than on the Burge Plantation, near Covington, Georgia. And I do not know in the whole country a place that I should rather see again in springtime—the Georgia springtime, when the air is like a tonic vapor distilled from the earth, from pine... more...

To Mr. Ray Gilbert Late Student, Aged Twenty-three Were you an older man, my dear Ray, your letter would be consigned to the flames unanswered, and our friendship would become constrained and formal, if it did not end utterly. But knowing you to be so many years my junior, and so slightly acquainted with yourself or womankind, I am going to be the friend you need, instead of the misfortune you invite.... more...

INTRODUCTION A splendid book in which a soul lives so profoundly human and so purely feminine that any words of introduction seem leaden and intrusive. You feel as though you were violating the essential delicacy and powerful life of this soul to comment upon the remarkable revelation of it between the very covers that contain the revelation. Yet, as a modest friend of letters, I should like to express... more...