Fiction Books

Chapter 1 A Little Village Called Montignies St. Christophe We passed through it late in the afternoon—this little Belgian town called Montignies St. Christophe—just twenty-four hours behind a dust- colored German column. I am going to try now to tell how it looked to us. I am inclined to think I passed this way a year before, or a little less, though I cannot be quite certain as to that. Traveling... more...

CHAPTER I THE UP CALL FOR TORCHY Well, it's come! Uh-huh! And sudden, too, like I knew it would, if it came at all. No climbin' the ladder for me, not while they run express elevators. And, believe me, when the gate opened, I was right there with my foot out. It was like this: One mornin' I'm in my old place behind the brass rail, at the jump-end of the buzzer. I'm... more...

CHAPTER I.“There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” The practice of man-midwifery is one among the noxious weeds which the rank luxuriance of civilization has produced, and since its introduction it has thriven with unrestrained vitality and ever-increasing strength, until at length it spreads its Upas shadow far and wide over our land, and... more...

CHAPTER I Sitting down on the edge of the bed, Dolly looked around forlornly enough. Of course, she wanted to go to college, but for the first time she realized how dreadful it was, to be away from all the home-folks. In all those great buildings, with their hundreds of students, there was not a soul that Dolly knew. Outside the door she could hear the old girls talking and chattering together. But she... more...

They loaded the over-age spaceship at night because Triton's one spaceport was too busy with the oreships from Neptune during the day to handle it. "Symphonies!" Pitchblend Hardesty groaned. Pitchblend Hardesty was the stevedore foreman and he had supervised upwards of a thousand loadings on Triton's crowded blastways, everything from the standard mining equipment to the innards of a... more...

Someone in the crowd tittered when the big ungainly creature reached the head of the line. "Name?" The creature swayed back and forth foolishly, supporting the bulk of his weight first on one extremity and then on the other. His face which had a slight rosy tint anyway got redder. "Come, come. Planet? Name?" The registrar was only a machine, but the registrar could assume an air of... more...

PART ONE THE SEA RIDDLE The late afternoon sky flaunted its splendour of blue and gold like a banner over the Pacific, across whose depths the trade wind droned in measured cadence. On the ocean's wide expanse a hulk wallowed sluggishly, the forgotten relict of a once brave and sightly ship, possibly the Sphinx of some untold ocean tragedy, she lay black and forbidding in the ordered procession of... more...

THE LADY WHO PUT SALT IN HER COFFEE. his was Mrs. Peterkin. It was a mistake. She had poured out a delicious cup of coffee, and, just as she was helping herself to cream, she found she had put in salt instead of sugar! It tasted bad. What should she do? Of course she couldn't drink the coffee; so she called in the family, for she was sitting at a late breakfast all alone. The family came in; they... more...

INTRODUCTION This book is a protest and a deliverance. For seven years I had written continuously of Canada, though some short stories of South Sea life, and the novel Mrs. Falchion, had, during that time, issued from my pen. It looked as though I should be writing of the Far North all my life. Editors had begun to take that view; but from the start it had never been my view. Even when writing Pierre... more...

PREFACE In writing this work my aim has been to give the exact facts as far as the available material allows. Necessarily it is impossible, from the very nature of the case, to obtain all the facts. It is obvious that in both past and present times the chief beneficiaries of our social and industrial system have found it to their interest to represent their accumulations as the rewards of industry and... more...