Fiction Books

There was a man in our town, And he was wond'rous wise; He jumped into a bramble bush, And scratch'd out both his eyes! —Old Nursery Rhyme Peter de Hooch was dreaming that the moon had blown up when he awakened. The room was dark except for the glowing night-light near the door, and he sat up trying to separate the dream from reality. He focused his eyes on the glow-plate. What had wakened... more...

THE BABY ESKIMO The little Eskimo away up in the northern part of British America has a pretty hard time of it, as you may know when you think how cold it is there. He is born in a snow hut, and when he is but a few hours old he is carried on his mother's back out upon the ice, and around and around in circles and after a while through deep snow back to the hut. If that does not kill him, the... more...

CHAPTER I. MONTE-CRISTO AND THE PRIMA DONNA. The Count of Monte-Cristo was in Rome. He had hired one of the numerous private palaces, the Palazzo Costi, situated on a broad thoroughfare near the point where the Ponte St. Angelo connects Rome proper with that transtiberine suburb known as the Leonine City or Trastavere. The impecunious Roman nobility were ever ready to let their palaces to titled... more...

LETTER I My dear father and mother, We arrived here last night, highly pleased with our journey, and the occasion of it. May God bless you both with long life and health, to enjoy your sweet farm, and pretty dwelling, which is just what I wished it to be. And don't make your grateful hearts too uneasy in the possession of it, by your modest diffidence of your own unworthiness: for, at the same... more...

CHAPTER I Mrs. Munden had not yet been to my studio on so good a pretext as when she first intimated that it would be quite open to me—should I only care, as she called it, to throw the handkerchief—to paint her beautiful sister-in-law.  I needn’t go here more than is essential into the question of Mrs. Munden, who would really, by the way, be a story in herself.  She has a manner of her own of... more...

THE OCTOBER LAND I sat on the ground with my youthful legs tucked under me, and the bridle rein of El Mahdi over my arm, while I hammered a copper rivet into my broken stirrup strap. A little farther down the ridge Jud was idly swinging his great driving whip in long, snaky coils, flicking now a dry branch, and now a red autumn leaf from the clay road. The slim buckskin lash would dart out hissing,... more...

Boys and Girls. This is the tale of two terraces, of two families who lived therein, of several boys and many girls, and especially of one Darsie, her education, adventures, and ultimate romance. Darsie was the second daughter in a family of six, and by reason of her upsetting nature had won for herself that privilege of priority which by all approved traditions should have belonged to Clemence, the... more...

In introducing this new writer to the English-speaking public, I may be permitted to give a few particulars of himself and his life. Stijn Streuvels is accepted not only in Belgium, but also in Holland as the most distinguished Low-Dutch author of our time: his vogue, in fact, is even greater in the North Netherlands than in the southern kingdom. And I will go further and say that I know no greater... more...

When Mr. Hutchinson. Port, a single gentleman who admitted that he was forty-seven years old and who actually was rising sixty, of strongly fixed personal habits, and with the most positive opinions upon every conceivable subject, came to know that by the death of his widowed sister he had been placed in the position of guardian of that sister's only daughter, Dorothy, his promptly formed and... more...

CHAPTER ONE THE INDIANS MUST GO Luck Lindsay had convoyed his thirty-five actor-Indians to their reservation at Pine Ridge, and had turned them over to the agent in good condition and a fine humor and nice new hair hatbands and other fixings; while their pockets were heavy with dollars that you may be sure would not he spent very wisely. He had shaken hands with the braves, and had promised to let them... more...