Fiction Books

LONELY VALLEYS The maid, smartly capped in starched ruffled muslin and black, who admitted them to the somber luxury of the rectory, hesitated in unconcealed sulky disfavor. "Doctor Goodlowe has hardly started dinner," she asserted. "Just ask him to come out for a little," the man repeated. He was past middle age, awkward in harsh ill-fitting and formal clothes and with a gaunt... more...

INTRODUCTIONTHE WORKMANSHIP OF THE ONE-ACT PLAY The one-act play is a new form of the drama and more emphatically a new form of literature. Its possibilities began to attract the attention of European and American writers in the last decade of the nineteenth century, those years when so many dramatic traditions lapsed and so many precedents were established. It is significant that the oldest play in... more...

I INTRODUCES THE BOYS It was late in the fall of the second year of the civil war that I rejoined my company at Santa Fé, New Mexico, from detached service in the Army of the Potomac. The boom of the sunrise gun awoke me on the morning after my arrival, and I hastened to attend reveille roll-call. As I descended the steps of the officers' quarters the men of the four companies composing the... more...

CHAPTER I A FRIEND IN NEED A light breeze, scented with the smell of the firs, was blowing down the inlet, and the tiny ripples it chased across the water splashed musically against the bows of the canoe. They met her end-on, sparkling in the warm sunset light, gurgled about her sides, and trailed away astern in two divergent lines as the paddles flashed and fell. There was a thud as the blades struck... more...

I HAVEN [To Clarence Day, Jr.] "You should only," we are told, "wear white in early youth and old age. It is very becoming with a fresh complexion or white hair. When you no longer feel as young as you were, other colours are more flattering. Also, you should avoid bright lights and worry." Here, the beauty specialist reminds you of the specialist who says in winter, "Avoid wet feet... more...

NORAH'S HOME The grey old dwelling, rambling and wide,With the homestead paddocks on either side,And the deep verandahs and porches tallWhere the vine climbs high on the trellised wall.G. ESSEX EVANS. Billabong homestead lay calm and peaceful in the slanting rays of the sum that crept down the western sky. The red roofs were half hidden in the surrounding trees—pine and box and mighty blue gums... more...

ARTHUR and ALBINA. Ah me! the yellow western sky turns pale, And leaves the cheerless sons of earth to mourn; And yet I hear net in the silent vale, A sound to tell me Arthur does return.   Ah, haste ye hours! quick plume the loit'ring wing! Bring back my hero, crown'd with glorious spoils! Let bards on lofty harps his triumphs sing, And loud applause repay successful toils!   Reward the... more...

Chapter One. The Secret of Verloren Vlei. It was not until my second season’s hunting with Koenraad du Plessis that I heard of Verloren Vlei, a place I am never likely to forget. Du Plessis was a Transvaal Boer, descended, as his name implies, from that good Huguenot stock which, after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, made its way to the Cape to replenish the Dutch settlers. The French language... more...

The slick black car sped along the wide and straight street. It came to a smooth stop in front of a clean white house. A man got out of the car and walked briskly to the door. Reaching out with a pink hand, he pressed the doorbell with one well-manicured finger. The door was answered by a housewife. She was wearing a white blouse, a green skirt and a green apron trimmed with white. Her feet were tucked... more...

LITTLE FISH Quirt Creek flowed sluggishly between willows which sagged none too gracefully across its deeper pools, or languished beside the rocky stretches that were bone dry from July to October, with a narrow channel in the center where what water there was hurried along to the pools below. For a mile or more, where the land lay fairly level in a platter-like valley set in the lower hills, the mud... more...