Fiction Books

What a singular moment is the first one, when you have hardly begun to recollect yourself after starting from midnight slumber! By unclosing your eyes so suddenly, you seem to have surprised the personages of your dream in full convocation round your bed, and catch one broad glance at them before they can flit into obscurity. Or, to vary the metaphor, you find yourself, for a single instant, wide awake... more...

A PRESENT FROM CHINA It was the first thing I saw that night as I swung into my chambers. Fact is, for the moment, it was the only thing I saw. Somehow, its splash of yellow there under the shaded lamp seemed to catch my eye and hold it. I screwed my glass tight and examined the thing with interest. Nothing remarkable; just a tiny, oblong package, bearing curious foreign markings, its wrapper plainly... more...

Directly below the old fort of San Cristobal, in San Juan, Porto Rico, projecting out over the sea from a corner of the sea wall, is a sentry box. Years ago a sentry, placed on duty at this lonely post, utterly disappeared, leaving behind only his musket and side-arms. His disappearance was so mysterious that it was attributed to sea-devils, and the sentry box has ever since been given a wide berth by... more...

INTRODUCTION. In the summer of 1848 the author of the following tale was a passenger on board a steamboat from New Orleans to Cincinnati. During the passage—one of the most prolonged and uncomfortable in the annals of western river navigation—the plot of this story was arranged. Many of its incidents, and all its descriptions of steamboat life, will be recognized by the voyager of the Mississippi.... more...

THE HAUNTED AND THE HAUNTERS; OR, THE HOUSE AND THE BRAIN. * * * * * A friend of mine, who is a man of letters and a philosopher, said to me one day, as if between jest and earnest, "Fancy! since we last met I have discovered a haunted house in the midst of London." "Really haunted,—and by what?—ghosts?" "Well, I can't answer that question; all I know is this: six weeks ago... more...

The sun has "dropped down," and the "day is dead." The silence and calm of coming night are over everything. The shadowy twilight lies softly on sleeping flowers and swaying boughs, on quiet fountains—the marble basins of which gleam snow-white in the uncertain light—on the glimpse of the distant ocean seen through the giant elms. A floating mist hangs in the still warm air, making... more...

CHAPTER I. "EMILY DID IT." Among my earliest recollections these three words have a place, coming to my ears as the presages of a reprimand. I had made a frantic effort to lift my baby-brother from his cradle, and had succeeded only in upsetting baby, pillows and all, waking my mother from her little nap, while brother Hal stood by and shouted, "Emily did it." I was only five years of... more...

HASTINGS Hastings is the gateway into an enchanted garden. Between the hills and the sea it lies—the most romantic province in this England of ours. Scarcely a place in it seems to belong to this present: from end to end it is built up almost entirely of memories. The very repetition of the names—Rye, Winchelsea, Pevensey, Battle, Bodiam, Hurstmonceux—conjures up the past in all its magnificence... more...

CHAPTER I THE SQUALL ON THE LAKE "Stand by, Captain John!" shouted Lawry Wilford, a stout boy of fourteen, as he stood at the helm of a sloop, which was going before the wind up Lake Champlain. "What's the matter, Lawry?" demanded the captain. "We're going to have a squall," continued the young pilot, as he glanced at the tall peaks of the Adirondacks. There was a... more...

CHAPTER I The light cruisers and destroyers—Harwich in war time—The Harwich Force goes out—The first shots of the naval war—Sinking of the Königin Luise—Loss of the Amphion. He who undertakes to write the history of the Naval Forces which had Harwich as their base during the Great War will have a wonderful story indeed to tell—from the sinking, within a few days of the declaration of war,... more...