Family Life Books

CHAPTER I f all the sensations to which the human mind is a prey, there is none so powerful in its finality, so chilling in its sense of an impending event as the knowledge that Death—grim, implacable Death—has cast his shadow on a life that custom and circumstance have rendered familiar. Whatever the personal feeling may be—whether dismay, despair, or relief—no man or woman can watch that... more...

CHAPTER I Enter Eleanor A child in a faded tam-o’-shanter that had once been baby blue, and a shoddy coat of a glaring, unpropitious newness, was sitting uncomfortably on the edge of a hansom seat, and gazing soberly out at the traffic of Fifth Avenue. The young man beside her, a blond, sleek, narrow-headed youth in eye-glasses, was literally making conversation with her. That is, he was engaged in a... more...

Young Powell and his Chance. I believe he had seen us out of the window coming off to dine in the dinghy of a fourteen-ton yawl belonging to Marlow my host and skipper. We helped the boy we had with us to haul the boat up on the landing-stage before we went up to the riverside inn, where we found our new acquaintance eating his dinner in dignified loneliness at the head of a long table, white and... more...

SO LONG AS YE BOTH SHALL LIVE! It was late November. And as Honora sat at the window of the drawing-room of the sleeping car, life seemed as fantastic and unreal as the moss-hung Southern forest into which she stared. She was happy, as a child is happy who is taken on an excursion into the unknown. The monotony of existence was at last broken, and riven the circumscribing walls. Limitless possibilities... more...

CHAPTER I. NEW PLANS. "So this is to be your first day in Wall Street, Rufus," said Miss Manning. "Yes," said Rufus, "I've retired from the newspaper business on a large fortune, and now I'm going into business in Wall Street just to occupy my time." The last speaker was a stout, well-grown boy of fifteen, with a pleasant face, calculated to inspire confidence. He... more...

PRELUDE An Hour in the Life of Two Modern Young People April, 1909.Lounging idly in the deserted little waiting-room was the usual shabby, bored, lonely ticket-seller, prodigiously indifferent to the grave beauty of the scene before him and to the throng of ancient memories jostling him where he stood. Without troubling to look at his watch, he informed the two young foreigners that they had a long... more...

CHAPTER I. MY FIRST SUPPER PARTY The devil take me if I can remember her name, notwithstanding I dearly loved her, the charming girl! It is strange how rich we find ourselves when we rummage in old drawers; how many forgotten sighs, how many pretty little trinkets, broken, old-fashioned, and dusty, we come across. But no matter. I was now eighteen, and, upon my honor, very unsuspecting. It was in the... more...

CHAPTER ONE You could not have lived a week in Winnebago without being aware of Mrs. Brandeis. In a town of ten thousand, where every one was a personality, from Hen Cody, the drayman, in blue overalls (magically transformed on Sunday mornings into a suave black-broadcloth usher at the Congregational Church), to A. J. Dawes, who owned the waterworks before the city bought it. Mrs. Brandeis was a... more...

CHAPTER I ASCENDI Honora did not go back to Quicksands. Neither, in this modern chronicle, shall we. The sphere we have left, which we know is sordid, sometimes shines in the retrospect. And there came a time, after the excitement of furnishing the new house was over, when our heroine, as it were, swung for a time in space: not for a very long time; that month, perhaps, between autumn and winter. We... more...

Chapter One. Let none sit down to read this little tale, whose interest can only be excited by the relation of uncommon circumstances, of romantic adventures, of poetical perplexities, or of picturesque difficulties. No beauties of this kind will be here found. I propose to give a plain, unaffected narrative of the exertions made by a family of young persons, to render themselves and each other happy... more...