Fiction Books

CHAPTER I. THE ARRESTS The two boats fastened to the little pier that jutted out from the garden lay rocking in its shadow. Here and there lighted windows showed through the thick mist on the margins of the lake. The Enghien Casino opposite blazed with light, though it was late in the season, the end of September. A few stars appeared through the clouds. A light breeze ruffled the surface of the water.... more...

AN INTRODUCTORY MEDLEY. "Pleasure and action make the hours seem short."—Othello. I had long looked forward to one more visit to Victoria, perhaps the last I should expect to make, and the opportunity of the opening of the great Centenary Exhibition at Melbourne on 1st August of this year was too good to be lost. Accordingly, having been able to arrange business matters for so long a holiday,... more...

INTRODUCTION. "Inest sua gratia parvis." "Les petites choses n'ont de valeur que de la part de ceux qui peuvent s'élever aux grandes."—De Jouy. There is no department of inquiry in which it is not full as easy to miss truth as to find it, even when the materials from which truth is to be drawn are actually present to our senses. A child does not catch a gold fish in water... more...

CHAPTER I. EDUCATIONAL TENDENCIES. I was born in a retired but pleasant part of New England, as New England was half a century ago, and as, in many places, despite of its canals, steamboats, railroads, and electromagnetic telegraphs, it still is. Hence I am entitled to the honor of being, in the most emphatic sense, a native of the land of "steady habits." The people with whom I passed my early... more...

The sun shone clear and hot, and the guests in the garden were glad to rest in the shaded places of promenade along the brooksides and under the beeches and soaring pines of the avenues. Far up the extended hollow there was a basin first to receive the water from the conduit supposed to tap the aqueduct leading down from the forest of Belgrade. The noise of the little cataract there was strong enough... more...

OUR PARISH CHAPTER I—THE BEADLE.  THE PARISH ENGINE.  THE SCHOOLMASTER How much is conveyed in those two short words—‘The Parish!’  And with how many tales of distress and misery, of broken fortune and ruined hopes, too often of unrelieved wretchedness and successful knavery, are they associated!  A poor man, with small earnings, and a large family, just manages to live on from hand to... more...

INTRODUCTION Paul Henri Thiery, Baron d'Holbach (1723-1789), was the center of the radical wing of the philosophes. He was friend, host, and patron to a wide circle that included Diderot, D'Alembert, Helvetius, and Hume. Holbach wrote, translated, edited, and issued a stream of books and pamphlets, often under other names, that has made him the despair of bibliographers but has connected his... more...

CHAPTER I CALICO PATCHWORK The gorgeous sunshine of a perfect June morning invited to the great outdoors. Exquisite perfume from myriad blossoms tempted lovers of nature to get away from cramped, man-made buildings, out under the blue roof of heaven, and revel in the lavish splendor of the day. This call of the Junetide came loudly and insistently to a little girl as she sat in the sitting-room of a... more...

CHAPTER I. Rocks-naked, hard, red-brown rocks all round; not a bush, not a blade, not a clinging moss such as elsewhere nature has lightly flung on the rocky surface of the heights, as if a breath of her creative life had softly touched the barren stone. Nothing but smooth granite, and above it a sky as bare of cloud as the rocks are of shrubs and herbs. And yet in every cave of the mountain wall there... more...

The launch carrying the mail, supplies and replacements eased slowly in toward the base, keeping the bulk of the Moon between itself and Earth. Captain Ebor, seated at the controls, guided the ship to the rocky uneven ground with the easy carelessness of long practice, then cut the drive, got to his walking tentacles, and stretched. Donning his spacesuit, he left the ship to go over to the dome and... more...