Fiction Books

I. SIOUX CEREMONIES, SCALP DANCE, &c. The Sioux occupy a country from the Mississippi river to some point west of the Missouri, and from the Chippewa tribe on the north, to the Winnebago on the south; the whole extent being about nine hundred miles long by four hundred in breadth. Dahcotah is the proper name of this once powerful tribe of Indians. The term Sioux is not recognized, except among... more...

CHAPTER I The Veterans of Ryeville Ryeville had rather prided itself on having the same population—about three thousand—for the last fifty years. That is the oldest inhabitants had, but the newer generation was for expansion in spite of tradition, and Ryeville awoke one morning, after the census taker had been busying himself, to find itself five thousand strong and still growing. There was no... more...

I wish Max would treat me like a woman. An hour ago, at dinner, John Armitage proposed a toast, especially for my benefit. He loves to play the gallant. Big man, silver mane, very blue eyes, a porcelain smile. The head of WSC, the perfect example of the politician-scientist. "To the colony," he announced, raising his glass. "May Epsilon love them and keep them. May it only be transmittal... more...

INTRODUCTION The entire Hungarian nation—king and people—have recently been celebrating the jubilee of Hungary's greatest writer, Maurice Jokai, whose pen, during half a century of literary activity, has given no less than 250 volumes to the world. Admired and beloved by his patriotic fellow-countrymen, Jokai has displayed that kind of genius which fascinates the learned and unlearned... more...

A RHAPSODY ON THE NOBLE PROFESSION OF NOVEL READING It must have been at about the good-bye age of forty that Thomas Moore, that choleric and pompous yet genial little Irish gentleman, turned a sigh into good marketable "copy" for Grub Street and with shrewd economy got two full pecuniary bites out of one melancholy apple of reflection:   "Kind friends around me fall  Like leaves in... more...

CHAPTER I. The traveller, who wanders at the present day along the northern and eastern borders of the Lake of Tezcuco, searches in vain for those monuments of aboriginal grandeur, which surrounded it in the age of Montezuma. The lake itself, which not so much from the saltness of its flood as from the vastness of its expanse, was called by Cortes the Sea of Anahuac, is no longer worthy of the name.... more...

The fiery disk of the sun was just lifting above the shoulder of hills that held the city of Stenton when the Greenstream stage rolled briskly from its depot, a dingy frame tavern, and commenced the long journey to its high destination. The tavern was on the outskirts of town; beyond, a broad, level plain reached to a shimmering blue silhouette of mountains printed on a silvery sky; and the stage... more...

CHAPTER I MERRY TIMES PROMISED Little Rose Atherton sat on the lower step of the three broad ones that led down from the piazza, and she wondered if there were, in all the world, a lovelier spot than Avondale. "And we live in the finest part of Avondale," she said, continuing her thoughts aloud. "Tho' wherever Uncle John is, seems better than anywhere else." She had spent the... more...

CHAPTER I. A SURPRISE IN THE SCREEN-ROOM. The city of Scranton lies in the centre of the Lackawanna coal-field, in the State of Pennsylvania. Year by year the suburbs of the city creep up the sides of the surrounding hills, like the waters of a rising lake. Standing at any point on this shore line of human habitations, you can look out across the wide landscape and count a score of coal-breakers within... more...

CHAPTER I Under a canopied platform stood a young girl, modeling in clay. The glare of the California sunshine, filtering through the canvas, became mellowed, warm and golden. Above the girl's head—yellow like the stalk of wheat—there hovered a kind of aureola, as if there had risen above it a haze of impalpable gold dust. A poet I know might have cried out that here ended his quest of the... more...