Fiction Books

CHAPTER I. THE TRAMP. "Will you give me a glass of water, please?" A ragged, bearded tramp stood before the door of a cottage near the outskirts of a country village, and propounded this question to a pretty girl who stood in the door. "In a moment." The girl disappeared, soon returning with a pitcher. She went to the pump near, and soon had the pitcher running over with sparkling... more...

CHAPTER I DEEP CAÑON The hunter was riding leisurely up the steep mountain side above Dry Mesa. On such an ascent most city men would have preferred to climb afoot. But there was a month’s layer of tan on the hunter’s handsome, supercilious face. He balanced himself lightly on his flat English saddle, and permitted the wiry little cow pony to pick the best path over the ledges and up the stiff... more...

The trouble began in a seemingly trivial way. Connor had wanted to speak to Rhoda, his wife, wished himself onto a trunk line and then waited. "Dallas Shipping here, Mars and points Jupiterward, at your service," said a business-is-business, unwifely voice in his mind. "I was not calling you," he thought back into the line, now also getting a picture, first flat, then properly 3-D and... more...

THE FEAR OF DEATH. Thou! whose superior, and aspiring mindCan leave the weakness of thy sex behind;Above its follies, and its fears can rise,Quit the low earth, and gain the distant skies:Whom strength of soul and innocence have taughtTo think of death, nor shudder at the thought;Say! whence the dread, that can alike engageVain thoughtless youth, and deep-reflecting age;Can shake the feeble, and appal... more...

CHAPTER 1 "Nobody," said Cap'n Bill solemnly, "ever sawr a mermaid an' lived to tell the tale." "Why not?" asked Trot, looking earnestly up into the old sailor's face. They were seated on a bench built around a giant acacia tree that grew just at the edge of the bluff. Below them rolled the blue waves of the great Pacific. A little way behind them was the house, a... more...

Chapter I. THE BEACH. A coach-and-six, as a rule, may be called an impressive Object.But something depends on where you see it. Viewed from the tall cliffs—along the base of which, on a strip of beach two hundred feet below, it crawled between the American continent and the Atlantic Ocean—Captain Oliver Vyell's coach-and-six resembled nothing so nearly as a black-beetle. For that matter the... more...

As the Capital Express train dashed into the village of Bruceton one bright afternoon, a brakeman passing through a car was touched on the shoulder by a man, who said,— "The man that left this in the seat in front got out three stations back. You don't s'pose he'll want it again an' send back for it, do you?" The brakeman looked at an object which the speaker held up as he... more...

FLYING MACHINES   Early Attempts at Flight—The Dirigible—Professor Langley's  Experiment—The Wright Brothers—Count Zeppelin—Recent Aeroplane  Records. It is hard to determine when men first essayed the attempt to fly. In myth, legend and tradition we find allusions to aerial flight and from the very dawn of authentic history, philosophers, poets, and writers have made allusion to... more...

Chapter I. In a large and handsomely-furnished room of a somewhat old-fashioned house, situated in a rural district in the south of Scotland, was assembled, one day in the early summer of 185-, a small group in deep mourning. Mr. Hogarth, of Cross Hall, had been taken suddenly ill a few days previously, and had never recovered consciousness so far as to be able to speak, though he had apparently known... more...

SUEZ In the State of Dixie, County of Clearwater, and therefore in the very heart of what was once the "Southern Confederacy," lies that noted seat of government of one county and shipping point for three, Suez. The pamphlet of a certain land company—a publication now out of print and rare, but a copy of which it has been my good fortune to secure—mentions the battle of Turkey Creek as... more...