Fiction Books

"Over the Plum-Pudding" I have been asked so often and by so many persons known and unknown to me why it was that a Christmas book that was to have been issued some years ago under my editorial supervision never appeared, although announced as ready for immediate publication, that I feel that I should make some statement in explanation of the seeming deception. The matter was very annoying,... more...

CHAPTER I. THIS happened a very few years after, my marriage, and is one of those feeling incidents in life that we never forget. My husband's income was moderate, and we found it necessary to deny ourselves many little articles of ornament and luxury, to the end that there might be no serious abatement in the comforts of life. In furnishing our house, we had been obliged to content ourselves... more...

CHAPTER I IN WHICH I LEARN FOR THE FIRST TIME THAT I HAVE AN UNCLE The first remembrance I hold of my father is of a dark-suited tall man of an unchanging gravity on all occasions. He had, moreover, a manner of saying "Ay, ay," which I early came to regard as the prologue to some definite prohibition; as when I asked him (I being then but a scrubbed boy) for his great sword, to give it to a... more...

CHAPTER I OUT OF THE WILDERNESS He appeared an odd figure, sitting loosely on an old white mare which held her nose to the ground and cautiously single-footed over the uneven road. Unconcerned, perhaps unconscious that he bestrode a horse, his head was thrown back and his gaze penetrated the lace-work of branches to a sky exquisite blue where a few white, puffy clouds were aimlessly suspended. And,... more...

PROLOGUE. On the evening of May 3, 1827, the garden of a large red-brick bow-windowed mansion called North End House, which, enclosed in spacious grounds, stands on the eastern height of Hampstead Heath, between Finchley Road and the Chestnut Avenue, was the scene of a domestic tragedy. Three persons were the actors in it. One was an old man, whose white hair and wrinkled face gave token that he was at... more...

INTRODUCTION All whales, dolphins, and porpoises belong to an order or major scientific group called the Cetacea by scientists. They are all mammals (air-breathing animals which have hair in at least some stage of their development, maintain a constant body temperature, bear their young alive, and nurse them for a while) which have undergone extensive changes in body form (anatomy) and function... more...

Pariah The air of the city's cheapest flophouse was thick with the smells of harsh antiseptic and unwashed bodies. The early Christmas snowstorm had driven in every bum who could steal or beg the price of admission, and the long rows of cots were filled with fully clothed figures. Those who could afford the extra dime were huddled under thin, grimy blankets. The pariah who had been Dr. Daniel... more...

I. A certain Persian nobleman obtained from a cow gipsy a small oyster. Holding him up by the beard, he addressed him thus: "You must try to forgive me for what I am about to do; and you might as well set about it at once, for you haven't much time. I should never think of swallowing you if it were not so easy; but opportunity is the strongest of all temptations. Besides, I am an orphan, and... more...

CHAPTER I He was thirty-three, agreeable to look at, equipped with as much culture and intelligence as is tolerated east of Fifth Avenue and west of Madison. He had a couple of elaborate rooms at the Lenox Club, a larger income than seemed to be good for him, and no profession. It follows that he was a pessimist before breakfast. Besides, it's a bad thing for a man at thirty-three to come to the... more...

INTRODUCTORY TOTHE GORGON’S HEAD ENEATH the porch of the country-seat called Tanglewood, one fine autumnal morning, was assembled a merry party of little folks, with a tall youth in the midst of them. They had planned a nutting expedition, and were impatiently waiting for the mists to roll up the hill-slopes, and for the sun to pour the warmth of the Indian summer over the fields and pastures, and... more...