Fiction Books

MARY WILDER TILESTON. January 1 They go from strength to strength.—PS. lxxxiv. 7. First the blade, then the ear, after that the full corn in the ear.—MARK. iv. 28.   Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul,  As the swift seasons roll!  Leave thy low-vaulted past!  Let each new temple, nobler than the last,  Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast,  Till thou at length art... more...

INTRODUCTION. Two of the dramas contained in this volume are the most celebrated of all Calderon's writings. The first, "La Vida es Sueno", has been translated into many languages and performed with success on almost every stage in Europe but that of England. So late as the winter of 1866-7, in a Russian version, it drew crowded houses to the great theatre of Moscow; while a few years... more...

INTRODUCTION A long list of works Gertrude Atherton has to her credit as a writer. She is indisputably a woman of genius. Not that her genius is distinctively feminine, though she is in matters historical a passionate partisan. Most of the critics who approve her work agree that in the main she views life with somewhat of the masculine spirit of liberality. She is as much the realist as one can be who... more...

CHAPTER I. You are fond (said my aunt) of sketches of the society which has passed away. I wish I could describe to you Sir Philip Forester, the "chartered libertine" of Scottish good company, about the end of the last century. I never saw him indeed; but my mother's traditions were full of his wit, gallantry, and dissipation. This gay knight flourished about the end of the seventeenth and... more...

OF MURDERS AND MYSTERIES. As this little book was written some four years ago, I feel able to review it without prejudice. A new book just hot from the brain is naturally apt to appear faulty to its begetter, but an old book has got into the proper perspective and may be praised by him without fear or favor. "The Big Bow Mystery" seems to me an excellent murder story, as murder stories go, for,... more...

CHAPTER I Outside the St. Jermyn's Club the rain pelted pitilessly upon deserted pavements. Mr. Robert Grell leaned his arms on the table and stared steadily out through the steaming window-panes for a second. His shoulders lifted in a shrug that was almost a shiver. "It's a deuce of a night," he exclaimed with conviction. There was a faint trace of accent in his voice—an almost... more...

X THE UNKNOWN QUANTITY The poet Longfellow—or was it Confucius, the inventor of wisdom?—remarked: "Life is real, life is earnest; And things are not what they seem." As mathematics are—or is: thanks, old subscriber!—the only just rule by which questions of life can be measured, let us, by all means, adjust our theme to the straight edge and the balanced column of the great goddess... more...

he sidewalk was as soft as a good bed. Malone lay curled on it thinking about nothing at all. He was drifting off into a wonderful dream and he didn't want to interrupt it. There was this girl, a beautiful girl, more wonderful than anything he had ever imagined, with big blue eyes and long blond hair and a figure that made the average pin-up girl look like a man. And she had her soft white hand on... more...

Chapter I. Of Cornet Joseph Clarke of the Ironsides It may be, my dear grandchildren, that at one time or another I have told you nearly all the incidents which have occurred during my adventurous life. To your father and to your mother, at least, I know that none of them are unfamiliar. Yet when I consider that time wears on, and that a grey head is apt to contain a failing memory, I am prompted to... more...

Chapter One. Why Old Baboon has that Kink in his Tail. The day was hot, and the koppies simmered blue and brown along the Vaal River. Noon had come, dinner was done. “Allah Mattie!” said the grey old kitchen boy to himself, as he stretched to sleep in the shade of the mimosa behind the house. “Allah Mattie! but it near break my back in dem tobacco lands dis mawnin’. I sleep now.” He stretched... more...