Fiction Books

CHAPTER ONE A little girl sat on the worn front doorsteps of the Randall house. She sat very still and straight, with her short, white skirts fluffed daintily out on both sides, her hands tightly clasped over her thin knees, and her long, silk-stockinged legs cuddled tight together. She was bare-headed, and her short, soft hair showed silvery blonde in the fading light. Her hair was bobbed. For one... more...

A BOY OF THE WILDERNESS The forest was still. A calm lay upon its vast extent, from the green-capped hills in the east to the noble river which, fed by the streams so quietly meandering through the pleasantly wooded country, found its way to the sea where the greatest city of the New World was destined to stand. The clear, bell-like note of a waking bird startled the morning hush. A doe and her fawn... more...

LESSON I FISH FOR BREAKFAST Of all the fish in the wide ocean world, the Herring deserves to be called the king. He gives work to thousands of people, and food to millions. Many towns exist because of him; if he failed to visit our seas, these big towns would shrink to tiny villages. There are several interesting kinds of Herring, but we will first look at the one we know so well, which is such good... more...

CHAPTER ONE JOY IN AMBER SATIN Joy Havenith had no business at all to be curled up on the back stairs under Great-Grand-Aunt Lucilla's picture. She ought to have been sliding sweetly up and down the long double parlors with teacups and cake, and she knew it. But she just didn't care. As a matter of fact, Aunt Lucilla and the other ancestors ought to have been in the parlors, too; but... more...

CHAPTER I WHY I WENT TO PRISON   Many years back, in my early boyhood, I was taken through Auburn Prison. It has always been the main object of interest in our town, and I was a small sized unit in a party of sightseers. No incident of childhood made a more vivid impression upon me. The dark, scowling faces bent over their tasks; the hideous striped clothing, which carried with it an unexplainable... more...

CHAPTER I. WHICH IS MERELY EXPLANATORY. The first undertaking of the author of these pages will be to convince his readers that he has not set about making a merely funny book, and that the subject of which he writes is one that challenges their serious and earnest attention. Whatever of humorous description may be found in the succeeding chapters, is that which grows legitimately out of certain... more...

Chapter I The Universal Art It is productive of much mischief to try to make people believe that the life of prayer is easy. In reality there is nothing quite so difficult as strong prayer, nothing so worthy of the attention and the exercise of all the fine parts of a great manhood. On the other hand there is no man who is not equal to the task. So splendid has this human nature of ours become through... more...

It is a singular fact that though many of the earlier Buddhist Scriptures have been translated by competent scholars, comparatively little attention has been paid to later Buddhist devotional writings, and this although the developments of Buddhism in China and Japan give them the deepest interest as reflecting the spiritual mind of those two great countries. They cannot, however, be understood without... more...

CHAPTER I. INTO THE INFINITE LONG AGO. Jefferson Worth's outfit of four mules and a big wagon pulled out of San Felipe at daybreak, headed for Rubio City. From the swinging red tassels on the bridles of the leaders to the galvanized iron water bucket dangling from the tail of the reach back of the rear axle the outfit wore an unmistakable air of prosperity. The wagon was loaded only with a... more...

CHAPTER I. THE OUTLAWS. It was a bright morning in the month of August, when a lad of some fifteen years of age, sitting on a low wall, watched party after party of armed men riding up to the castle of the Earl of Evesham. A casual observer glancing at his curling hair and bright open face, as also at the fashion of his dress, would at once have assigned to him a purely Saxon origin; but a keener eye... more...