Fiction Books

CHAPTER I TREE-PLANTING Land hunger is so general that it may be regarded as a natural craving. Artificial modes of life, it is true, can destroy it, but it is apt to reassert itself in later generations. To tens of thousands of bread-winners in cities a country home is the dream of the future, the crown and reward of their life-toil. Increasing numbers are taking what would seem to be the wiser... more...

A note about this story This story is from my collection, "A Place So Foreign and Eight More," published by Four Walls Eight Windows Press in September, 2003, ISBN 1568582862. I've released this story, along with five others, under the terms of a Creative Commons license that gives you, the reader, a bunch of rights that copyright normally reserves for me, the creator. I recently did the... more...

THE CHILDREN OF THE UPPER GLEN. There was, of course, the Lower Glen, which consisted of boggy places and endless mists in winter, and a small uninteresting village, where the barest necessaries of life could be bought, and where the folks were all of the humbler class, well-meaning, hard-working, but, alas! poor of the poor. When all was said and done, the Lower Glen was a poor place, meant for poor... more...

Now this is the beginning of the Hollow Tree stories which the Story Teller told the Little Lady in the queer old house which stands in the very borders of the Big Deep Woods itself. They were told in the Room of the Lowest Ceiling and the Widest Fire—a ceiling so low that when the Story Teller stands upright it brushes his hair as he walks, and a fire so deep that pieces of large trees do not need... more...

THE READER IS INTRODUCED TO THEM In the House of Many Windows which stands in a large city and is sometimes called a "flat" by people who, because they are grown up, do not know any better, live the Little Lady and the Story Teller. The Little Lady is four years old, going on five, and is fond of stories. This makes her and the Story Teller good friends. They mostly sit in the firelight after... more...

First, the Statement So bountiful hath been the earth and so securely have we drawn from it our substance, that we have taken it all for granted as if it were only a gift, and with little care or conscious thought of the consequences of our use of it; nor have we very much considered the essential relation that we bear to it as living parts in the vast creation. It is good to think of ourselves—of... more...

STRUGGLING IN THE WORLD. Do you know where it is -- the Hollow Land? I have been looking for it now so long, trying to find it again the Hollow Land for there I saw my love first. I wish to tell you how I found it first of all; but I am old, my memory fails me: you must wait and let me think if I perchance can tell you how it happened. Yea, in my ears is a confused noise of trumpet-blasts singing over... more...

CHAPTER I MARCH COMES IN LIKE THE LION The train, which had roared through a withering gale of sleet all the way up from New York, came to a standstill, with many an ear-splitting sigh, alongside the little station, and a reluctant porter opened his vestibule door to descend to the snow-swept platform: a solitary passenger had reached the journey's end. The swirl of snow and sleet screaming out of... more...

CHAPTER I FROM THE INVASION OF THE NETHERLANDS BY THE ROMANS TO THE INVASION BY THE SALIAN FRANKS B.C. 50—A.D. 200 The Netherlands form a kingdom of moderate extent, situated on the borders of the ocean, opposite to the southeast coast of England, and stretching from the frontiers of France to those of Hanover. The country is principally composed of low and humid grounds, presenting a vast plain,... more...

A Bolt from the Blue The atmosphere of the office that morning was a shade less genial than usual. We had all of us fought our way downtown through such a storm of wind, snow, slush, and sleet as is to be found nowhere save in mid-March New York, and our tempers had suffered accordingly. I had found a cab unobtainable, and there was, of course, the inevitable jam on the Elevated, with the trains many... more...