Fiction Books

CHAPTER I. Jeremiah Brander was one of the most prominent personages in the Cathedral town of Abchester. He inhabited an old-fashioned, red brick house near the end of the High Street. On either side was a high wall facing the street, and from this a garden, enclosing the house, stretched away to a little stream some two hundred yards in the rear; so that the house combined the advantage of a business... more...

UNDER THE SWORD OF DAMOCLES. We built our cabin high on the slopes of the Sangre de Christo range, overlooking the broad, level San Luis Valley, in Colorado. At the rear of the cabin rose a towering cliff or rather a huge slab of rock standing edgewise more than two hundred feet high, apparently the upheaval of some mighty convulsion of nature in ages gone. Near the base of this cliff flowed a clear... more...

INTRODUCTION One of the most remarkable facts about Ibsen is the orderly development of his genius. He himself repeatedly maintained that his dramas were not mere isolated accidents. In the foreword to the readers in the popular edition of 1898 he urges the public to read his dramas in the same order in which he had written them, deplores the fact that his earlier works are less known and less... more...

Once upon a time, a large caravan moved slowly over the desert. On the vast plain, where nothing was to be seen but sand and sky, might have been heard in the far distance the tinkling bells of the camels and the ringing hoof beats of horses. A thick cloud of dust that moved before it indicated the approach of the caravan; and when a breeze parted this cloud, gleaming weapons and brilliantly colored... more...

CHAPTER I For half a century the housewives of Pont-l'Eveque had envied Madame Aubain her servant Felicite. For a hundred francs a year, she cooked and did the housework, washed, ironed, mended, harnessed the horse, fattened the poultry, made the butter and remained faithful to her mistress—although the latter was by no means an agreeable person. Madame Aubain had married a comely youth without... more...

CHAPTER I THE CRASH “ Failed!” ejaculated John Valiant blankly, and the hat he held dropped to the claret-colored rug like a huge white splotch of sudden fright. “The Corporation—failed!” The young man was the glass of fashion, from the silken ribbon on the spotless Panama to his pearl-gray gaiters, and well favored—a lithe stalwart figure, with wide-set hazel eyes and strong brown hair... more...

CHAPTER XLVI. Philip left the capitol and walked up Pennsylvania Avenue in company with Senator Dilworthy. It was a bright spring morning, the air was soft and inspiring; in the deepening wayside green, the pink flush of the blossoming peach trees, the soft suffusion on the heights of Arlington, and the breath of the warm south wind was apparent, the annual miracle of the resurrection of the earth. The... more...

CHAPTER I. MY GRANDFATHER AND HIS SONS. There was a time—a good old time—when men of rank and fortune were not ashamed of their poor relations; affording the protection of their name and influence to the lower shoots of the great family tree, which, springing from the same root, expected to derive support and nourishment from the main stem. That time is well-nigh gone for ever. Kindred love and... more...

Chapter I 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... more...

Not long after Lent, Fulkerson set before Dryfoos one day his scheme for a dinner in celebration of the success of 'Every Other Week.' Dryfoos had never meddled in any manner with the conduct of the periodical; but Fulkerson easily saw that he was proud of his relation to it, and he proceeded upon the theory that he would be willing to have this relation known: On the days when he had been... more...