Fiction Books

CHAPTER I. Rowland Mallet had made his arrangements to sail for Europe on the first of September, and having in the interval a fortnight to spare, he determined to spend it with his cousin Cecilia, the widow of a nephew of his father. He was urged by the reflection that an affectionate farewell might help to exonerate him from the charge of neglect frequently preferred by this lady. It was not that the... more...

CHAPTER I. THE HUCKSTER Sir Oliver Tressilian sat at his ease in the lofty dining-room of the handsome house of Penarrow, which he owed to the enterprise of his father of lamented and lamentable memory and to the skill and invention of an Italian engineer named Bagnolo who had come to England half a century ago as one of the assistants of the famous Torrigiani. This house of such a startlingly singular... more...

CHAPTER I. DEPENDENCIES IN EUROPE. HELIGOLAND AND THE FRISIANS.—GIBRALTAR AND THE SPANISH STOCK.—MALTA.—THE IONIAN ISLANDS.—THE CHANNEL ISLANDS. Heligoland.—We learn from a passage in the Germania of Tacitus, that certain tribes agreed with each other in the worship of a goddess who was revered as Earth the Mother; that a sacred grove, in a sacred island, was dedicated to her; and that, in... more...

CHAPTER I. MY BIRTHPLACE AND PARENTAGE.Dolce sentier,Colle, che mi piacesti,Ov'ancor per usanza amor mi mena! PETRARCH. Sweet, secluded, shady Saxonholme! I doubt if our whole England contains another hamlet so quaint, so picturesquely irregular, so thoroughly national in all its rustic characteristics. It lies in a warm hollow environed by hills. Woods, parks and young plantations clothe every... more...

CHAPTER I A GENTLEMAN RANKER Dan McLagan shifted his cigar, and his face lit with a grin of satisfaction. “Seventy-five per cent, of calves,” he murmured, glancing out at the sunlit yards. “Say, it’s been an elegant round-up.” Then his enthusiasm rose and found expression. “It’s the finest, luckiest ranch in Montana––in the country. Guess I’d be within my rights if I said ‘in the... more...

PALOMITAS I’ve been around considerable in the Western Country––mostly some years back––and I’ve seen quite a little, one way and another, of the folks living there: but I can’t really and truly say I’ve often come up with them nature’s noblemen––all the time at it doing stunts in natural nobility––the story-books make out is the chief population of them parts. Like enough the... more...

CHAPTER I So it was in him, then—an inherited fighting instinct, a driving intensity to kill. He was the last of the Duanes, that old fighting stock of Texas. But not the memory of his dead father, nor the pleading of his soft-voiced mother, nor the warning of this uncle who stood before him now, had brought to Buck Duane so much realization of the dark passionate strain in his blood. It... more...

CHAPTER I A HERO, BUT NOT HEROIC "Shall I ever be strong in mind or body again?" said Walter Gregory, with irritation, as he entered a crowded Broadway omnibus. The person thus querying so despairingly with himself was a man not far from thirty years of age, but the lines of care were furrowed so deeply on his handsome face, that dismal, lowering morning, the first of October, that he seemed... more...

PREFACE TO ZEN     Lao Tzu, Buddha, Confucius   Some call it "seeing," some call it "knowing," and some describe it in religious terms. Whatever the name, it is our reach for a new level of consciousness. Of the many forms this search has taken, perhaps the most intriguing is Zen. Growing out of the wisdom of China, India, and Japan, Zen became a powerful movement to explore the... more...

CHAPTER I YOUNG PETE With the inevitable pinto or calico horse in his string the horse-trader drifted toward the distant town of Concho, accompanied by a lazy cloud of dust, a slat-ribbed dog, and a knock-kneed foal that insisted on getting in the way of the wagon team. Strung out behind this indolently moving aggregation of desert adventurers plodded an indifferent lot of cayuses, their heads lowered... more...