Fiction Books

CHAPTER I A KNOCK AT THE DOOR Fran knocked at the front door. It was too dark for her to find the bell; however, had she found it, she would have knocked just the same. At first, no one answered. That was not surprising, since everybody was supposed to be at the Union Camp-meeting that had been advertised for the last two months. Of course it was not beyond possibility that some one might have stayed... more...

CHAPTER I A PLENIPOTENTIARY   Has no writer ever dealt with the dramatic aspect of the unopened envelope? I cannot recall such a passage in any of my authors, and yet to my mind there is much matter for philosophy in what is always the expressionless shell of a boundless possibility. Your friend may run after you in the street, and you know at a glance whether his news is to be good, bad, or... more...

CHAPTER I THE LAST SEA LINK WITH FRANCE 1720-1744 The fortress of Louisbourg arose not from victory but from defeat; not from military strength but from naval weakness; not from a new, adventurous spirit of attack, but from a half-despairing hope of keeping one last foothold by the sea. It was not begun till after the fortunes of Louis XIV had reached their lowest ebb at the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713.... more...

LAYAMON'S BRUT At Totnes Constantin the fair and all his host came ashore; thither came the bold man—well was he brave!—and with him two thousand knights such as no king possessed. Forth they gan march into London, and sent after knights over all the kingdom, and every brave man, that speedily he should come anon. The Britons heard that, where they dwelt in the pits; in earth and in stocks... more...

CHAPTER I AT RAINBOW HILL VALLEY A companionable silence prevailed in the room. At intervals it was broken, but only by the rustle of paper or the striking of a match. The heavy breathing, almost amounting to a snore, of one of the two men, and the inarticulate protests of a laboring "rocker" chair—these things were only a part of it. The man at the table was deeply immersed in a miniature... more...

CHAPTER I. The Three Cranes in the Vintry. Adjoining the Vintry Wharf, and at the corner of a narrow lane communicating with Thames Street, there stood, in the early part of the Seventeenth Century, a tavern called the Three Cranes. This old and renowned place of entertainment had then been in existence more than two hundred years, though under other designations. In the reign of Richard II., when it... more...

THE PRACTICE OF AGRICULTURE Skilful practice is applied science. This fact is illustrated in every chapter of the excellent and comprehensive work now before us [1]. In a previous article, (see the number for June 1842,) we illustrated at some length the connexion which now exists, and which hereafter must become more intimate, between practical agriculture and modern science. We showed by what secret... more...

I scarcely know what excuse I can offer for making public this attempt to "translate the untranslatable." No one can be more convinced than I am that a really successful translator must be himself an original poet; and where the author translated happens to be one whose special characteristic is incommunicable grace of expression, the demand on the translator's powers would seem to be... more...

CHAPTER I. AT HILTON SEMINARY. It was four o'clock in the afternoon on the opening day of the midwinter term at Hilton Seminary, a noted institution located in a beautiful old town of Western New York. A group of gay girls had just gathered in one of the pleasant and spacious recreation rooms and were chattering like the proverbial flock of magpies—exchanging merry greetings after their... more...

CHAPTER I The need of a large sum of money in a great hurry is the root of many noble ambitions, in whose branches roost strange companies of birds, pecking away for dollars that grow—or do not—on bushes. And it was in such a quest that Miss Patricia Adair of Adairville, Kentucky, lit upon a limb of life beside Mr. Godfrey Vandeford of Broadway, New York. Their joint endeavors made a great... more...