Fiction Books

CHAPTER IA COLT IS BORN It was high noon in the desert, but there was no dazzling sunlight. Over the earth hung a twilight, a yellow-pink softness that flushed across the sky like the approach of a shadow, covering everything yet concealing nothing, creeping steadily onward, yet seemingly still, until, pressing low over the earth, it took on changing color, from pink to gray, from gray to black–gloom... more...

PART I. An Errant King THE thunder groaned, the wind howled, the rain fell in hissing torrents, impenetrable darkness covered the earth. A blue and forky flash darted a momentary light over the landscape. A Doric temple rose in the centre of a small and verdant plain, surrounded on all sides by green and hanging woods. 'Jove is my only friend,' exclaimed a wanderer, as he muffled himself up... more...

A WORD OF EXPLANATION It was in Warwick Castle that I came across the curious stranger whom I am going to talk about.  He attracted me by three things: his candid simplicity, his marvelous familiarity with ancient armor, and the restfulness of his company—for he did all the talking. We fell together, as modest people will, in the tail of the herd that was being shown through, and he at once began to... more...

DEDICATORY SERMON. BY REV. MARY BAKER EDDY, First pastor of The First Church of Christ, Scientist, Boston, Mass.,Delivered Jan. 6, 1895. TEXT—Psalms xxxvi, 8. "They shall be abundantly satisfied with the fatness of thy house; and thou shalt make them drink of the river of thy pleasures." A new year is a nursling, a babe of time, a prophecy and promise clad in white raiment,... more...

CHAPTER I THE TALISMAN I believe it was the old Egyptians, a very wise people, probably indeed much wiser than we know, for in the leisure of their ample centuries they had time to think out things, who declared that each individual personality is made up of six or seven different elements, although the Bible only allows us three, namely, body, soul, and spirit. The body that the man or woman wore, if... more...

CHAPTER I. "The stars are out, and by their glistening light, I fain would whisper in thine ear a tale; Wilt hear it kindly? and if long and dull Believe me far more deeply grieved than thou." Clear and loud on the hushed silence of the midnight hour rang the chimes of the village clock, from the tall steeple-tower of the quaint old church of Wimbledon, while several ambitious chickens rose... more...

INTRODUCTION "A work of art is first cloudily conceived in the mind; during the period of gestation it stands more clearly forward from these swaddling mists, puts on expressive lineaments, and becomes at length that most faultless, but also, alas! that incommunicable product of the human mind, a perfected design. On the approach to execution all is changed. The artist must now step down, don his... more...

CHAPTER I INTRODUCING MALCOLM HAY If a man is not eager for adventure at the age of twenty-two, the enticement of romantic possibilities will never come to him. The chairman of the Ukraine Oil Company looked with a little amusement at the young man who sat on the edge of a chair by the chairman's desk, and noted how the eye of the youth had kindled at every fresh discouragement which the chairman... more...

LETTER XIV. DUCLER—ST. GEORGES DE BOCHERVILLE—M. LANGLOIS. (Ducler, July, 1818.) You will look in vain for Ducler in the livre des postes; yet this little town, which is out of the common road of the traveller, becomes an interesting station to the antiquary, it being situated nearly mid-way between two of the most important remains of ancient ecclesiastical architecture in Normandy—the abbeys of... more...

THE MILLER'S WIFE OF ERBISDORF. The ancient and free mountain city of Freiberg lies only about five-and-twenty miles south-west of Dresden, yet has a far more severe climate than the Saxon capital—a fact that may be understood if we remember that the road which leads from Dresden to Freiberg is up hill almost all the way. The Saxon Erzgebirge must not be pictured as a chain of separate... more...