Fiction Books

THE PEACE-PIPELONG ago, when our cities were pleasant woodlands and the white man was far beyond the seas, the great Manito, God of all the Indians, descended to the earth. From the red crags of the Great Red Pipestone Quarry he gazed upon the country that he ruled, and a silver river gushed from his footprints and turned to gold as it met the morning sun. The Great Manito stooped to gather some of the... more...

WINDFALLS. ROSE AND ROOF-TREE.  O wayward rose, why dost thou wreathe so high, Wasting thyself in sweet-breath'd ecstasy? "The pulses of the wind my life uplift, And through my sprays I feel the sunlight sift; "And all my fibres, in a quick consent Entwined, aspire to fill their heavenward bent. "I feel the shaking of the far-off sea, And all things growing blend their life with... more...

Daptine is the secret of it. Adaptine, they called it first; then it got shortened to daptine. It let us adapt. They explained it all to us when we were ten years old; I guess they thought we were too young to understand before then, although we knew a lot of it already. They told us just after we landed on Mars. "You're home, children," the Head Teacher told us after we had gone into the... more...

CHAPTER I "WHILE THE HEART BEATS YOUNG" The scorching heat of a midsummer day beat mercilessly upon the earth. Travelers on the dusty roads, toilers in the fields, and others exposed to the rays of the sun, thought yearningly of cooling winds and running streams. They would have looked with envy upon the scene being enacted in one of the small streams of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. There a... more...

Times are altered since Gray spoke of the young Etonians as a set of dirty boys playing at cricket. There are no such things as boys to be met with now, either at Eton or elsewhere; they are all men from ten years old upwards. Dirt also hath vanished bodily, to be replaced by finery. An aristocratic spirit, an aristocracy not of rank but of money, possesses the place, and an enlightened young gentleman... more...

CHAPTER I We get under way. Polynesia's busiest corner. Our ship's company. A patriotic celebration rudely interrupted. In the grip of the elements. Necessary repairs. A night vigil. Land ho! "Is she tight?" asked Captain Ezra Triplett. (We were speaking of my yawl, the Kawa). "As tight as a corset," was my reply. "Good. I'll go." In this short interview I... more...

CHAPTER I.SEWELL NEWHOUSE. Mr. Sewell Newhouse, the inventor of the Newhouse Trap grew up surrounded by the Iroquois Indians of the Oneida Tribe; that tribe which alone of all the Red men cast in their lot with the Americans in our great struggle for liberty. MR. SEWELL NEWHOUSE. At an early age he learned the gunsmith's trade. In those days guns were all made by hand, and in small shops. Mr.... more...

RÍDAN THE DEVIL Rídan lived alone in a little hut on the borders of the big German plantation at Mulifenua, away down at the lee end of Upolu Island, and every one of his brown-skinned fellow-workers either hated or feared him, and smiled when Burton, the American overseer, would knock him down for being a 'sulky brute.' But no one of them cared to let Rídan see him smile. For to... more...

The great advantage of being the fool of the family—My destiny is decided, and I am consigned to a stockbroker as part of his Majesty’s sea-stock—Unfortunately for me Mr Handycock is a bear, and I get very little dinner. If I cannot narrate a life of adventurous and daring exploits, fortunately I have no heavy crimes to confess: and, if I do not rise in the estimation of the reader for acts of... more...

The success of Verrian did not come early, and it did not come easily. He had been trying a long time to get his work into the best magazines, and when he had won the favor of the editors, whose interest he had perhaps had from the beginning, it might be said that they began to accept his work from their consciences, because in its way it was so good that they could not justly refuse it. The particular... more...