Fiction Books

CHAPTER I "I'm sure of one thing," said Aralia to her little sister Pansy, as they sat together one lovely summer afternoon on the garden seat, and gazed away and away far over the North Sea. "I'm quite sure of one thing. Nobody ever could have so good an uncle as our uncle. Now, could anybody, Pansy?" "Oh no!" answered Pansy, shaking her pretty head. Pansy was hardly... more...

CHAPTER I   They were married in the little Episcopal church in Eagle Pass on a September day in the late eighties. The fact may be verified, I have no doubt, by any who will take the trouble to examine the records, for the toy-like place of worship still stands. The church structure is not, perhaps, so small as my imagination presents it to me; but I cannot see it save with the desert as a... more...

A tale ought never to stand in need of a preface or commentary. The best are those which are the most strictly national and in the highest sense of the word popular, which touch immediately the sympathies of the living generation, and display the common elements of our nature, the purely human, under the social relations most familiar to the author and the reader. For then essence and form are most... more...

THE EXPANSION OF ENGLAND. 'There is a vulgar view of politics which sinks them into a mere struggle of interests and parties, and there is a foppish kind of history which aims only at literary display, which produces delightful books hovering between poetry and prose. These perversions, according to me, come from an unnatural divorce between two subjects which belong to one another. Politics are... more...

JESUS AND THE WOMAN TAKEN IN ADULTERY. Jesus went unto the mount of Olives. And early in the morning he came again into the temple, and all the people came unto him; and he sat down, and taught them. And the scribes and Pharisees brought unto him a woman taken in adultery; and when they had set her in the midst, they say unto him, Master, this woman was taken in adultery, in the very act. Now Moses in... more...

More eloquent voices for Christ and the gospel have never come from the grave of a dead President than those which we hear from the tomb of our lamented chief magistrate. Twenty six years ago this summer a company of college students had gone to the top of Greylock Mountain, in Western Massachusetts, to spend the night. A very wide outlook can be gained from that summit. But if you will stand there... more...

CHAPTER I. The main road to wealth in New Orleans has long been Carondelet street. There you see the most alert faces; noses—it seems to one—with more and sharper edge, and eyes smaller and brighter and with less distance between them than one notices in other streets. It is there that the stock and bond brokers hurry to and fro and run together promiscuously—the cunning and the simple, the... more...

onfound it, Carnes, I am on my vacation!” “I know it, Doctor, and I hate to disturb you, but I felt that I simply had to. I have one of the weirdest cases on my hands that I have ever been mixed up in and I think that you’ll forgive me for calling you when I tell you about it.” How could a human body be found actually splintered––broken into sharp fragments like a shattered glass! Once... more...

THE EPISODE OF THE LANDLADY'S DAUGHTER First of a Series of Six Stories [First published in Pictorial Review, May 1916] When a seed-merchant of cautious disposition and an eye to the main chance receives from an eminent firm of jam-manufacturers an extremely large order for clover-seed, his emotions are mixed. Joy may be said to predominate, but with the joy comes also uncertainty. Are these... more...

CHAPTER I. "Put into a small preserving pan three ounces of fresh butter, and, as soon as it is just melted, add one pound of brown sugar of moderate quality—" "Not moderate; the browner the better," interpolates Algy. "Cannot say I agree with you. I hate brown sugar—filthy stuff!" says Bobby, contradictiously. "Not half so filthy as white, if you come to that,"... more...