Fiction Books

PREFACE It is with great good will that I write this short preface to the edition of "A Doctor of the Old School" (which has been illustrated by Mr. Gordon after an admirable and understanding fashion) because there are two things that I should like to say to my readers, being also my friends. One, is to answer a question that has been often and fairly asked. Was there ever any doctor so... more...

Just After The Ball. The storm-door closes with a bang! My escort, a stupid fellow, has said "Good-night!" He drives down the street in his old rattletrap of a coupe. I am so glad he is gone! And yet I am always afraid of burglars—or—something dreadful, whenever I go into the house alone so late at night. I bolt the inside door. I mount the hall-chair, left waiting by papa, and, trembling... more...

Early morning deliveries were part of the Honeychile Bakery Service. But on this particular morning the service was reversed! At 2:34 a.m., Patrolman Louis Whedbee left the Zip Cab station. With arch supports squeaking and night stick swinging, Whedbee walked east to the call box at the corner of Sullivan and Cherokee. The traffic signal suspended above the intersection blinked a cautionary amber. Not... more...

CHAPTER I. THE ORPHAN'S TRIAL. "We met ere yet the world had come To wither up the springs of youth, Amid the holy joys of home, And in the first warm blush of youth. We parted as they never part, Whose tears are doomed to be forgot; Oh, by what agony of heart Forget me not!—forget me not!" —Anonymous.   At nine o'clock the next morning Traverse went to the library to keep his... more...

Philip Danvers, heading a small party of horsemen, galloped around the corner of a warehouse and pulled up on the levee at Bismarck as the mate of the Far West bellowed, "Let 'er go!" "Hold on!" he shouted, leaping from his mount. "Why in blazes!" The mate's impatience flared luridly as he ordered the gang-plank replaced. His heat ignited the smouldering resentment of... more...

KIDD'S TREASURE Captain Kidd is the most ubiquitous gentleman in history. If his earnings in the gentle craft of piracy were frugally husbanded, he has possibly left some pots of money in holes in the ground between Key West and Halifax. The belief that large deposits of gold were made at Gardiner's Island, Dunderberg, Cro' Nest, New York City, Coney Island, Ipswich, the marshes back of... more...

THE BAY OF SEVEN ISLANDS. The volume in which "The Bay of Seven Islands" was published was dedicated to the late Edwin Percy Whipple, to whom more than to any other person I was indebted for public recognition as one worthy of a place in American literature, at a time when it required a great degree of courage to urge such a claim for a pro-scribed abolitionist. Although younger than I, he had... more...

CHAPTER I FROM TAVERN TO THEATRE "Out of question, you were born in a merry hour," says Don Pedro to the blithesome heroine of "Much Ado About Nothing." "No, sure, my lord," answers Beatrice. "My mother cried; but then there was a star danced, and under that was I born." Surely a star, possibly Venus, must have danced gaily on a certain night in the year of grace 1683,... more...

CHAPTER I. St. Albans, Vermont is near the eastern shore of Lake Champlain, and only a short distance south of "Five-and-forty north degrees" which separates the United States from Canada, and some sixty or seventy miles from the great St. Lawrence River and the city of Montreal. Near here it was, on April 6th, 1820, I was born, so the record says, and from this point with wondering eyes of... more...

THE MANAGING PARTNER.   She is neither your partner, nor ours, nor anybody else's in particular. She is in general business, of which matrimony is only a department. How she came to be concerned in so many concerns, is a mystery of nature, like the origin of the Poet—or rather of black Topsy. The latter, you know, was not born at all, she never had no father nor mother, she was not made by... more...