Fiction Books

BE THE BEST OF WHATEVER YOU ARE We all dream of great deeds and high positions, away from the pettiness and humdrum of ordinary life. Yet success is not occupying a lofty place or doing conspicuous work; it is being the best that is in you. Rattling around in too big a job is much worse than filling a small one to overflowing. Dream, aspire by all means; but do not ruin the life you must lead by... more...

CHAPTER I. TIFLIS—BAKU. "Ceci non!" A spacious apartment, its polished parquet strewn with white bearskins and the thickest and softest of Persian rugs; its panelled walls hung with Oriental tapestries, costly daggers, pistols, and shields of barbaric, but beautiful, workmanship, glistening with gold and silver. Every detail of the room denotes the artistic taste of the owner. Inlaid tables... more...

HARD FACTS. 'These are the facts, Miss Wharton; hard facts no doubt, but you wished for the truth, and indeed I could not have hidden it from you even if I had wished to do so.' So said a keen but kindly faced old gentleman, as he sat in an office surrounded by despatch and deed boxes which proclaimed his profession to be that of a lawyer. The young lady to whom these remarks were addressed,... more...

CHAPTER 1 Beside the rear window of the blacksmith shop Jasper Lanning held his withered arms folded against his chest. With the dispassionate eye and the aching heart of an artist he said to himself that his life work was a failure. That life work was the young fellow who swung the sledge at the forge, and truly it was a strange product for this seventy-year-old veteran with his slant Oriental eyes... more...

"Wonder 'f Eph's got back; they say his sentence run out yisterday." The speaker, John Doane, was a sunburnt fisherman, one of a circle of well-salted individuals who sat, some on chairs, some on boxes and barrels, around the stove in a country store. "Yes," said Captain Seth, a middle-aged little man with ear-rings; "he come on the stage to-noon. Would n't hardly... more...

Major general (Ret.) James J. Bennington had both professional admiration and personal distaste for the way the politicians maneuvered him. The party celebrating his arrival as the new warden of Duncannon Processing Prison had begun to mellow. As in any group of men with a common interest, the conversation and jokes centered on that interest. The representatives and senators of the six states which... more...

CHAPTER I THE CHANGE It is all my own fault. I was too free with my tongue. I said in a moment of bitterness: "What can a Bishop do with a parish priest? He's independent of him." It was not grammatical, and it was not respectful. But the bad grammar and the impertinence were carried to his Lordship, and he answered: "What can I do? I can send him a curate who will break his heart in... more...

CHAPTER I. THE PRESBYTERY. Grey Town looks down on the river and the ocean, its streets climbing up the small hill upon which the town has been built. It is a pleasant place in which to live, where, in winter, the air is warm, and in summer a cool breeze from the ocean tempers the hottest day. At the feet of the town the ocean beats restlessly on the narrow strip of beach that fringes the shore. On the... more...

CHAPTER XXVI YEAR 1785 Well may we say, in the pious words of my old friend and neighbour, the Reverend Mr Keekie of Loupinton, that the world is such a wheel- carriage, that it might very properly be called the WHIRL'D. This reflection was brought home to me in a very striking manner, while I was preparing a discourse for my people, to be preached on the anniversary day of my placing, in which I... more...

I Captain MacWhirr, of the steamer Nan-Shan, had a physiognomy that, in the order of material appearances, was the exact counterpart of his mind: it presented no marked characteristics of firmness or stupidity; it had no pronounced characteristics whatever; it was simply ordinary, irresponsive, and unruffled. The only thing his aspect might have been said to suggest, at times, was bashfulness; because... more...