Fiction Books

CHAPTER I. LAUNCHING OF MY LIFE-BOAT.   Wild was the night, yet a wilder night    Hung around o'er the mother's pillow;  In her bosom there waged a fiercer fight    Than the fight on the wrathful billow. Already there were more children than potatoes in her hut of logs, and yet, another unwelcome guest was coming, to whom fate had ordained that it would have been money in his... more...

CHAPTER I PRACTICAL POLITICS   That bids him flout the law he makes;  That bids him make the law he flouts. —Kipling. In buoyant spirit the Hon. Charles Norton rode up the bridle path leading through the Langdon plantation to the old antebellum homestead which, on a shaded knoll, overlooked the winding waters of the Pearl River. No finer prospect was to be had in all Mississippi than greeted the... more...

CHAPTER I. THE THREE MODES OF MANAGEMENT. It is not impossible that in the minds of some persons the idea of employing gentle measures in the management and training of children may seem to imply the abandonment of the principle of authority, as the basis of the parental government, and the substitution of some weak and inefficient system of artifice and manoeuvring in its place. To suppose that the... more...

A KNIGHT OF THE LEGION OF HONOR It was in the smoking-room of a Cunarder two days out. The evening had been spent in telling stories, the fresh-air passengers crowding the doorways to listen, the habitual loungers and card-players abandoning their books and games. When my turn came,—mine was a story of Venice, a story of the old palace of the Barbarozzi,—I noticed in one corner of the room a man... more...

THEMA Hark, ye Great, that withdraw yourselves from the Multitude! Loneliness is written for your word. Alone shall ye strive to solve the riddle of Creation. Seek ye help of them that have gone before? Ye shall find it not. Dream ye of sympathy, of praise, from those that watch your work to-day? They shall give ye rather mockery. Finally, would ye leave to your children legacies of wisdom that shall... more...

OUR SEA                     The Sea! the Sea!                Our own home-land, the Sea!  'Tis, as it always was, and still, please God, will be,                    When we are gone,                        Our own,                 Possessing it for Thee,               Ours, ours, and... more...

CHAPTER ONE Superciliousness is not safe after all, because a person who forms the habit of wearing it may some day find his lower lip grown permanently projected beyond the upper, so that he can't get it back, and must go through life looking like the King of Spain. This was once foretold as a probable culmination of Florence Atwater's still plastic profile, if Florence didn't change... more...

"Did it go well?" the aide asked. The admiral, affectionately known as the Old Man, did not reply until he'd closed the door, crossed the room, and dropped into the chair at his desk. Then he said: "Go well? It did not go at all. Every blasted one of them, from the President on down, can think of nothing but the way the Combine over-ran Venus. When I mention P-boats, they shout that... more...

INTRODUCTION According to the most recent review of the Mexican amphibian fauna (Smith and Taylor, 1948), six genera of leptodactylid frogs occur in México. One other genus, Pleurodema, occurs in Lower Central America. Smith and Taylor recognized one species of Engystomops, 28 of Eleutherodactylus, three of Leptodactylus, eight of Microbatrachylus, 12 of Syrrhophus, and five of Tomodactylus.... more...

Sethos entered the park. Brown autumn leaves crumpled sharply beneath his feet, the green grass sank. The sun was nearly gone, and the last of the children passed him, chattering as they faded into the twilight. Only one other person remained in the park, and she was waiting for Sethos. "Ela," he said. "Have you been here long?" She touched his cheek with hers in greeting. "Not at... more...