Fiction Books

INTRODUCTION One of the first facts which strike the traveller in Palestine is the smallness of a country which has nevertheless occupied so large a space in the history of civilised mankind. It is scarcely larger than an English county, and a considerable portion of it is occupied by rocky mountains and barren defiles where cultivation is impossible. Its population could never have been great, and... more...

CHAPTER I. THE giant clock on the wall in the assembly-room of Madam Truxton's fashionable school had marked the hour for dismission. Groups of restless, anxious pupils stood about the apartment, or were gathered at the windows, watching the rain that had been falling in copious showers since morning. All were eager to go, yet none dared brave the storm. Under the stone archway of the entrance to... more...

CHAPTER I Let a man, an arrow, and an answer each go straight. Each is his own witness. God is judge.—EASTERN PROVERB. A Sikh who must have stood about six feet without his turban—and only imagination knows how stately he was with it—loomed out of the violet mist of an Indian morning and scrutinized me with calm brown eyes. His khaki uniform, like two of the medal ribbons on his breast, was new,... more...

CHAPTER I. The Coming Of Lad In the mile-away village of Hampton, there had been a veritable epidemic of burglaries—ranging from the theft of a brand-new ash-can from the steps of the Methodist chapel to the ravaging of Mrs. Blauvelt's whole lineful of clothes, on a washday dusk. Up the Valley and down it, from Tuxedo to Ridgewood, there had been a half-score robberies of a very different... more...

AT SUNDOWN TO E. C. S. Poet and friend of poets, if thy glassDetects no flower in winter's tuft of grass,Let this slight token of the debt I oweOutlive for thee December's frozen day,And, like the arbutus budding under snow,Take bloom and fragrance from some morn of MayWhen he who gives it shall have gone the wayWhere faith shall see and reverent trust shall know. THE CHRISTMAS OF 1888. Low... more...

CHAPTER I. Near Moret, in France, where the Seine is formed and flows northward, there lives an old lady named Madame Blanc, who can tell much of the history written here––though it be a history belonging more to American lives than French. She was of the Caron establishment when Judithe first came into the family, and has charge of a home for aged ladies of education and refinement whose means... more...

CHAPTER I MOTHER AND SON A woman, tall, somewhat angular, dark of hair and eye, strong of features—a woman now approaching middle age—sat looking out over the long, tree-clad slopes that ran down from the gallery front of the mansion house to the gate at the distant roadway. She had sat thus for some moments, many moments, her gaze intently fixed, as though waiting for something—something or... more...

CHAPTER I There was unwonted bustle in the usually sleepy and dignified New York offices of the Southern and Transcontinental Railroad Company in lower Broadway. The supercilious, well-groomed clerks who, on ordinary days, are far too preoccupied with their own personal affairs to betray the slightest interest in anything not immediately concerning them, now condescended to bestir themselves and,... more...

My father’s land—Born at sea—My school life—Aunt Bretta—Spoilt by over-indulgence—Enticed to sea—The Kite schooner—Contrast of a vessel in port with a vessel at sea—My shipmates—My name fixed in more ways than one—A gale—Repentance comes too late—Suspicious customers—A narrow escape—Naples and its Bay. My father, Eric Wetherholm, was a Shetlander. He was born in the Isle... more...

SEPTEMBER The slow train puffed away into the unadventurous country; and the bees buzzing round the wine-dark dahlias along the platform were once again audible. The last farewell that Guy Hazlewood flung over his shoulder to a parting friend was more casual than it would have been had he not at the same moment been turning to ask the solitary porter how many cases of books awaited his disposition.... more...