Fiction Books

CHAPTER I If Nature is infallible, there should be some philosophic or eugenic professor arise and explain why she made such a grievous error in the personal appearance, vocal qualities, and general gestures of the learned judge, astute politician and hopeful statesman, Hon. J. Woodworth-Granger and Mr. James Gollop, perigrinating drummer for a chocolate house. Either the Honorable Judge should have... more...

CHAPTER I The woman leaned across the table towards her companion. "My friend," she said, "when we first met—I am ashamed, considering that I dine alone with you to-night, to reflect how short a time ago—you spoke of your removal here from Paris very much as though it were a veritable exile. I told you then that there might be surprises in store for you. This restaurant, for instance!... more...

Mrs. Lander went to a hotel in New York where she had been in the habit of staying with her husband, on their way South or North. The clerk knew her, and shook hands with her across the register, and said she could have her old rooms if she wanted them; the bell-boy who took up their hand-baggage recalled himself to her; the elevator-boy welcomed her with a smile of remembrance. Since she was already... more...

THE GHOST IN THE MILL "Come, Sam, tell us a story," said I, as Harry and I crept to his knees, in the glow of the bright evening firelight; while Aunt Lois was busily rattling the tea-things, and grandmamma, at the other end of the fireplace, was quietly setting the heel of a blue-mixed yarn stocking. In those days we had no magazines and daily papers, each reeling off a serial story. Once a... more...

BOOK I A MISCELLANY I - LA MARE DES FEES The leaves rain down upon the forest pond,An elfin tarn green-shadowed in the fern;Nine yews ensomber the wet bank, beyondThe autumn branches of the beeches burnWith yellow flame and red amid the green,And patches of the darkening sky between. This is an ancient country; in this woodThe Druids raised their sacrificial stones;Here the vast timeless silences still... more...

"WEEP NO MORE, MY LADY" A young woman was crying bitterly in the waiting-room of the railway station at Upper Asquewan Falls, New York. A beautiful young woman? That is exactly what Billy Magee wanted to know as, closing the waiting-room door behind him, he stood staring just inside. Were the features against which that frail bit of cambric was agonizingly pressed of a pleasing contour? The... more...

CHAPTER I. MRS. HAMILTON. For many years the broad, rich acres, and old-fashioned, massive building known as "The Homestead on the Hillside," had passed successively from father to son, until at last it belonged by right of inheritance to Ernest Hamilton. Neither time nor expense had been spared in beautifying and embellishing both house and grounds, and at the time of which we are speaking... more...

FAIRY PRINCE In my father's house were many fancies. Always, for instance, on every Thanksgiving Day it was the custom in our family to bud the Christmas tree. Young Derry Willard came from Cuba. His father and our father had been chums together at college. None of us had ever seen him before. We were very much excited to have a strange young man invited for Thanksgiving dinner. My sister Rosalee... more...

Like the love of music, books and pictures, the love of gardens comes with culture and leisure and with the ripening of the home life. The love of gardens, as of every other beautiful and refining thing, must increase to the end of time. More and more must the sympathies enlarge. There must be more points of contact with the world. Life ever becomes richer. Gardening is more than the growing of plants:... more...

I. BABCOCK'S DISCOVERY Something worried Babcock. One could see that from the impatient gesture with which he turned away from the ferry window on learning he had half an hour to wait. He paced the slip with hands deep in his pockets, his head on his chest. Every now and then he stopped, snapped open his watch and shut it again quickly, as if to hurry the lagging minutes. For the first time in... more...