Fiction Books

CHAPTER I THE DAWN OF A WEDDING-JOURNEY Mr. and Mrs. Hector Archibald were prosperous and happy dwellers in a suburb of one of our large towns. Fortune had favored them in many ways—in health and in a good average happiness. They had reached early middle age, and their daughter Kate, their only child, had grown up to be a beautiful and good young woman, and was on the point of marrying a young... more...

TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE WITH the present work M. Zola completes the "Trilogy of the Three Cities," which he began with "Lourdes" and continued with "Rome"; and thus the adventures and experiences of Abbe Pierre Froment, the doubting Catholic priest who failed to find faith at the miraculous grotto by the Cave, and hope amidst the crumbling theocracy of the Vatican, are here... more...

CHAPTER FIRST. THE "CRESCENT CITY"—THE HUSBAND'S DEPARTURE. Kind reader, have you ever been to New Orleans? If not, we will attempt to describe the metropolis of the Confederate States of America. New Orleans is situated on the Mississippi river, and is built in the shape of a crescent, from which it derives the appellation of "Crescent City." The inhabitants—that is, the... more...

Little Clare’s first home. “The mossy marbles restOn the lips he hath pressedIn their bloom,And the names he loved to hearHave been carved for many a yearOn the tomb.”  Oliver Wendell Holmes. “Cold!” said the carrier, blowing on his fingers to keep them warm. “Cold, bully Penmore!” ejaculated Hal Dockett,—farrier, horse-leech, and cow-doctor in ordinary to the town of Bodmin and its... more...

It might well be called the country of the outlaw, this vast tract of dense mountain forests and craggy ravines, this congeries of swirling torrents and cataracts and rapids. Here wild beasts lurked out their savage lives, subsisting by fang and prey,—the panther, the bear, the catamount, the wolf,—and like unto them, ferocious and fugitive, both fearsome and afraid, the man with a "wolf's... more...

Elements of colonial slavery.—By the middle of the seventeenth century, the settlements made in America by the English, Dutch, and Swedes were arranged for the most part in a line of little colonies closely following the Atlantic coast. To the west, wide forests and plains, broken only by the paths of the Indian, stretched on to the Pacific; while long intervals of unpopulated country separated... more...

All Dave Miller wanted to do was commit suicide in peace. He tried, but the things that happened after he'd pulled the trigger were all wrong. Like everyone standing around like statues. No St. Peter, no pearly gate, no pitchforks or halos. He might just as well have saved the bullet!Dave Miller would never have done it, had he been in his right mind. The Millers were not a melancholy stock, hardly... more...

CHAPTER I A LOST LANDMARK "The sins of the fathers upon the children, unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me." These are the words that have followed me always. This is the curse which has fallen on my life. If I had not known my father, if I had not loved him, if I had not closed his eyes in desert silence deeper than the silence of the grave, even if I could have buried and... more...

"My money, ma'am—my money, not me." "So you say, sir." "It's my money you've been marrying, ma'am." "Maybe so, sir." "Deny it, deny it!" "Why should I? You say it is so, and so be it." "Then d——— the money. It took me more till ten years to make it, and middling hard work at that; but you go bail it'll take me less nor... more...

THE AMIN OF KALAA.Emerging from these gloomy caflons, and passing the Beni-Mansour, the village of Thasaerth (where razors and guns are made), Arzou (full of blacksmiths), and some other towns, we enter the Beni-Aidel, where numerous white villages, wreathed with ash trees, lie crouched like nests of eggs on the summits of the primary mountains, with the magnificent peaks of Atlas cut in sapphire upon... more...