Fiction Books

INTRODUCTION BY THE HON. JOSEPH H. CHOATE, FORMER AMERICANAMBASSADOR TO GREAT BRITAIN For five months now all people who read at all have been reading about the horrible war that is devastating Europe and shedding the best blood of the people of five great nations. In fact, they have had no time to read anything else, and everything that is published about it is seized upon with great avidity. No... more...

CHAPTER I It did not seem a very pleasant room. To be sure, there were a great many nice things in it. There was rose-colored paper on the wall, and the woodwork was of ivory, with gilt lines. There were pictures of ships on the ocean and of high trees and of the sun going down behind a hill, and there was one of an old mill with nobody at all in sight. And there was one picture with dogs in it. There... more...

Chapter I It was springtime in the California Sierra. Never were skies bluer, never did the golden sun-flood steep the endless forest lands in richer life-giving glory. Ridge after ridge the mountains swept on and fell away upon one side until in the vague distances they sank to the monotonous level of the Sacramento Valley; down there it was already summer, and fields were hot and brown. Ridge after... more...

CHAPTER I. "The stars are out, and by their glistening light, I fain would whisper in thine ear a tale; Wilt hear it kindly? and if long and dull Believe me far more deeply grieved than thou." Clear and loud on the hushed silence of the midnight hour rang the chimes of the village clock, from the tall steeple-tower of the quaint old church of Wimbledon, while several ambitious chickens rose... more...

CHAPTER I. THE LUMBER KINGDOM Perhaps the real history of the rise of the lumber industry in the Pacific Northwest will never be written. It will not be set down in these pages. A fragment—vividly illustrative of the whole, yet only a fragment—is all that is reproduced herein. But if that true history be written, it will tell no tales of "self-made men" who toiled in the woods and mills... more...

PREFACE There are two ways in which the French Revolution may be considered. We may look at the great events which astonished and horrified Europe and America: the storming of the Bastille, the march on Versailles, the massacres of September, the Terror, and the restoration of order by Napoleon. The study of these events must always be both interesting and profitable, and we cannot wonder that... more...

CHAPTER ONE The thin winter day had died early, and at four o'clock it was dark night in the long room in which Mr. Innes gave his concerts of early music. An Elizabethan virginal had come to him to be repaired, and he had worked all the afternoon, and when overtaken by the dusk, he had impatiently sought a candle end, lit it, and placed it so that its light fell upon the jacks.... Only one more... more...

On the south a high arbor-vitæ hedge separated Evelina's garden from the road. The hedge was so high that when the school-children lagged by, and the secrets behind it fired them with more curiosity than those between their battered book covers, the tallest of them by stretching up on tiptoe could not peer over. And so they were driven to childish engineering feats, and would set to work and pick... more...

TO THE AUTHORS OF THE MONTHLY AND CRITICAL REVIEWS. GENTLEMEN, The liberty which I take in addressing to you the trifling production of a few idle hours, will doubtless move your wonder, and probably your contempt. I will not, however, with the futility of apologies, intrude upon your time, but briefly acknowledge the motives of my temerity; lest, by a premature exercise of that patience which I hope... more...

CHAPTER I. "Why do you persist in refusing to receive the addresses of Willard Duffel, when you know my preference for him?" "Because I do not like him." "'Do not like him,' forsooth! And pray, are you going to reject the best offer in the county because of a simple whim? the mere fancy of a vain-headed, foolish and inexperienced girl? I did not before suppose that a... more...