Fiction Books

PAUL PATOFF. My dear lady—my dear friend—you have asked me to tell you a story, and I am going to try, because there is not anything I would not try if you asked it of me. I do not yet know what it will be about, but it is impossible that I should disappoint you; and if the proverb says, "Needs must when the devil drives," I can mend the proverb into a show of grace, and say, The most... more...

INTRODUCTION Victor Hugo was thinking much of Æschylus and his Prometheus at the time he conceived the figure of Gilliatt, heroic warrer with the elements. But it is to a creature of the Gothic mind like Byron's Manfred, and not to any earlier, or classic, type of the eternal rebellion against fate or time or circumstance, that Hugo's readers will be tempted to turn for the fellow to his... more...

THE SHAPE OF FEAR TIM O'CONNOR—who was descended from the O'Conors with one N—— started life as a poet and an enthusiast. His mother had designed him for the priesthood, and at the age of fifteen, most of his verses had an ecclesiastical tinge, but, somehow or other, he got into the newspaper business instead, and became a pessimistic gentleman, with a literary style of great beauty and... more...

CHAPTER I. It was the last day of Captain Wilbur Cranston's leave of absence. For three blissful months he had been visiting his old home in a bustling Western city, happy in the happiness of his charming wife in this her first long restoration to civilization since their marriage ten years before; happy in the pride and joy of his father and mother in having once more under their roof the soldier... more...

CHAPTER ONE THE SCRAP OF GREY PAPER As a rule, Spargo left the Watchman office at two o'clock. The paper had then gone to press. There was nothing for him, recently promoted to a sub-editorship, to do after he had passed the column for which he was responsible; as a matter of fact he could have gone home before the machines began their clatter. But he generally hung about, trifling, until two... more...

PREFACE This book consists almost entirely of legends or traditions of a varied character, referring to places and buildings in Florence, such as the Cathedral and Campanile, the Signoria, the Bargello, the different city gates, ancient towers and bridges, palaces, crosses, and fountains, noted corners, odd by-ways, and many churches.  To all of these there are tales, or at least anecdotes attached,... more...

This is Marny's story, not mine. He had a hammer in his hand at the time and a tack between his teeth. "Going to hang Fiddles right under the old fellow's head," he burst out. "That's where he belongs. I'd have given a ten-acre if he could have drawn a bead on that elk himself. Fiddles behind a .44 Winchester and that old buck browsing to windward"—and he nodded at... more...

I had arrived at Inley Abbey that afternoon, and was sitting at dinner with Inley and his pretty wife, whom I had not seen for five years, since the day I was his best man, when we all heard faintly the tolling of a church bell. Lady Inley shook her shoulders in a rather exaggerated shudder. "Someone dead!" said her husband. "It's a mistake to build a church in the grounds of a... more...

CHAPTER I The "Really, Truly" True WHEN "Little Women," the play, reopened to many readers the pages of "Little Women," the book, that delightful chronicle of family life, dramatist and producer learned from many unconscious sources the depth of Louisa M. Alcott's human appeal. Standing one night at the back of the theater as the audience was dispersing, they listened to... more...

CHAPTER I. OF THE KING OF OAKENREALM, AND HIS WIFE AND HIS CHILD. Of old there was a land which was so much a woodland, that a minstrel thereof said it that a squirrel might go from end to end, and all about, from tree to tree, and never touch the earth: therefore was that land called Oakenrealm. The lord and king thereof was a stark man, and so great a warrior that in his youth he took no delight in... more...