Fiction Books

In the old Stock of Fife, there was not perhaps an individual whose exertions were followed by consequences of such a remarkable nature as those of Davie Duff, popularly called "The Thane of Fife," who, from a very humble parentage, rose to fill one of the chairs of the magistracy of his native burgh. By industry and economy in early life, he obtained the means of erecting, solely on his own... more...

ALL AT SEA Mr. Joseph P. Mangles, at his ease in a deck-chair on the broad Atlantic, was smoking a most excellent cigar. Mr. Mangles was a tall, thin man, who carried his head in the manner curtly known at a girls' school as "poking." He was a clean-shaven man, with bony forehead, sunken cheeks, and an underhung mouth. His attitude towards the world was one of patient disgust. He had the... more...

THE VILLAGE CONVICT. "Wonder 'f Eph's got back; they say his sentence run out yisterday." The speaker, John Doane, was a sunburnt fisherman, one of a circle of well-salted individuals who sat, some on chairs, some on boxes and barrels, around the stove in a country store. "Yes," said Captain Seth, a middle-aged little man with earrings; "he come on the stage to-noon.... more...

THE SHEEP COUNTRY So John Mackenzie had put his foot upon the road. This after he had reasoned it out as a mathematical problem, considering it as a matter of quantities alone. There was nothing in school-teaching at sixty dollars a month when men who had to carry a rubber stamp to sign their names to their checks were making fortunes all around him in sheep. That was the way it looked to John... more...

CHILD'S FIRST PICTURE BOOK     THE FIRE HORSES stand ready in their stalls, and at the sound of the alarm gong the stall chains are let down and each horse goes quickly to his place at the engine, and the big iron collars are clamped around their necks and off they go to the fire, with the engine, at break-neck speed.     THE AUTOMOBILE FIRE ENGINE can go to the fires very swiftly. Many times... more...

INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. He cast, (of which we rather boast,) The Gospel's pearl upon our coast, And in these rocks for us did frame A temple where to sound His name. O let our voice His praise exalt Till it arrive at Heaven's vault, Which there perhaps rebounding may Echo beyond the Mexic bay. Thus sang they, in the English boat, A holy and a cheerful note, And all the way to guide their chime,... more...

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CHAPTER 1 Curdie was the son of Peter the miner. He lived with his father and mother in a cottage built on a mountain, and he worked with his father inside the mountain. A mountain is a strange and awful thing. In old times, without knowing so much of their strangeness and awfulness as we do, people were yet more afraid of mountains. But then somehow they had not come to see how beautiful they are as... more...

CHAPTER I. Say, ye oppressed by some fantastic woes, Some jarring nerve that baffles your repose, Who press the downy couch while slaves advance With timid eye to read the distant glance, Who with sad prayers the weary doctor tease To name the nameless, ever-new disease, Who with mock patience dire complaints endure, Which real pain and that alone can cure, How would you bear in real pain to lie... more...

PROLOGUE A straight stretch of dusty Norman road dappled with grotesque shadows of the ancient apple-trees that, bent as if in patient endurance of the weight of their thick-set scarlet fruit, edged it on both sides. Under one of the trees, his back against its gnarled trunk, sat an old man playing a cracked fiddle. He played horribly, wrenching discords from the poor instrument, grinning with a kind... more...