Fiction Books

CHAPTER I. THE CALL TO WORK. "I'm afraid there'll be no more school for you now, Frank darling. Will you mind having to go to work?" "Mind it! Why, no, mother; not the least bit. I'm quite old enough, ain'tI?" "I suppose you are, dear; though I would like to have you stay at your lessons for one more year anyway. What kind of work would you like best?"... more...

CHAPTER I. Description of Plymouth, N. C. Plymouth, in 1863-4, was a small town, situate on the Roanoke river, about six miles from where the waters of that stream enters the Albermarle Sound. The river at Plymouth is nearly a quarter of a mile wide, and with a sufficient depth of water to float the largest draught gunboats. The shore next the town was supplied with a wharf for landing steamers that... more...

Nearly ten years have passed since the close of the civil war in America, and yet no satisfactory history thereof is accessible to the public; nor should any be attempted until the Government has published, and placed within the reach of students, the abundant materials that are buried in the War Department at Washington. These are in process of compilation; but, at the rate of progress for the past... more...

In the Morning of Life the Truthful wooed the Beautiful, and their offspring was Love. Like his Divine parents, He is eternal. He has his Mother's ravishing smile; his Father's steadfast eyes. He rises every day, fresh and glorious as the untired Sun-God. He is Eros, the ever young. Dark, dark were this world of ours had either Divinity left it—dark without the day-beams of the Latonian... more...

CHAPTER I MR. JOHN VYNER, ship-owner, pushed his chair back from his writing-table and gazed with kindly condescension at the chief clerk as he stood before it with a handful of papers. "We shall be able to relieve you of some of your work soon, Hartley," he said, slowly. "Mr. Robert will come into the firm next week." The chief clerk bowed. "Three years at Cambridge," resumed... more...

1 It was the first Saturday afternoon in August; it had been broiling hot all day, with a cloudless sky, and the sun had been beating down on the houses, so that the top rooms were like ovens; but now with the approach of evening it was cooler, and everyone in Vere Street was out of doors. Vere street, Lambeth, is a short, straight street leading out of the Westminster Bridge Road; it has forty houses... more...

"I'm desperately afear'd, Sue, that that brother of thine will turn out a jackanapes," was the apostrophe of the good yeoman Michael Howe, to his pretty daughter Susan, as they were walking one fine afternoon in harvest through some narrow and richly wooded lanes, which wound between the crofts of his farm of Rutherford West, situate in that out-of-the-way part of Berkshire which is... more...

Of the many masterpieces which classical antiquity has bequeathed to modern times, few have attained, at intervals, to such popularity; few have so gripped the interest of scholars and men of letters, as has this scintillating miscellany known as the Satyricon, ascribed by tradition to that Petronius who, at the court of Nero, acted as arbiter of elegance and dictator of fashion. The flashing, wit, the... more...

Claude Wheeler opened his eyes before the sun was up and vigorously shook his younger brother, who lay in the other half of the same bed. "Ralph, Ralph, get awake! Come down and help me wash the car." "What for?" "Why, aren't we going to the circus today?" "Car's all right. Let me alone." The boy turned over and pulled the sheet up to his face, to shut out the... more...

There was once a time (he began) when I decided that I was a fraud; that I could not be a psychical researcher any longer. I determined to give it all up, to investigate no more phenomena nor attend another séance, nor read a word about psychical research for the remainder of my life. On the contrary, I planned an intensive study of the works of the later Victorians, of that blissful period in the... more...