General Books

CHAPTER I. A quartette party—three violins and a 'cello—sat in summer evening weather in a garden. This garden was full of bloom and odor, and was shut in by high walls of ripe old brick. Here and there were large-sized plaster casts—Venus, Minerva, Mercury, a goat-hoofed Pan with his pipes, a Silence with a finger at her lips. They were all sylvan green and crumbled with exposure to the... more...

THE township of Haverhill, even as late as the close of the seventeenth century, was a frontier settlement, occupying an advanced position in the great wilderness, which, unbroken by the clearing of a white man, extended from the Merrimac River to the French villages on the St. Francois. A tract of twelve miles on the river and three or four northwardly was occupied by scattered settlers, while in the... more...

THE GEN D'ARME. I had fortunately sufficient influence upon my fair friends to persuade them to leave Calais early on the morning following; and two hours before Kilkee had opened his eyes upon this mortal life, we were far upon the road to Paris. Having thus far perfectly succeeded in my plot, my spirit rose rapidly, and I made every exertion to make the road appear short to my fellow-travellers.... more...

THE GOD OF HIS FATHERS I On every hand stretched the forest primeval,—the home of noisy comedy and silent tragedy.  Here the struggle for survival continued to wage with all its ancient brutality.  Briton and Russian were still to overlap in the Land of the Rainbow’s End—and this was the very heart of it—nor had Yankee gold yet purchased its vast domain.  The wolf-pack still clung to the... more...

I The time was the year 1872, and the place a bend in the river above a long pond terminating in a dam. Beyond this dam, and on a flat lower than it, stood a two-story mill structure. Save for a small, stump-dotted clearing, and the road that led from it, all else was forest. Here in the bottom-lands, following the course of the stream, the hardwoods grew dense, their uppermost branches just beginning... more...

CHAPTER I The most remarkable thing about the boy was his eyes––that is, if any man with his spread of shoulder and masculine grace of flat muscled hips could be spoken of any longer as a boy, merely because his years happened to number twenty-four. They, however––the eyes––were gray; not a too light, off-color, gleaming gray, but more the tone of slate, deep when one chanced to find... more...

The Princess Miss Mehitable Upton had come to the city to buy a stock of goods for the summer trade. She had a little shop at the fashionable resort of Keefeport as well as one in the village of Keefe, and June was approaching. It would soon be time to move. Miss Upton's extreme portliness had caused her hours of laborious selection to fatigue her greatly. Her face was scarlet as she entered a... more...

CHAPTER I. SCENE. Deck of an ocean steamer. Characters:Mrs. Jerrold, matron and chaperon in general.Edith Jerrold, her daughter.Albert Madden, a young man on study intent.Eric, his brother, on pleasure bent.Norman Mann, cousin of the Jerrolds, old classmate of theMaddens.Mae Madden, sister of the brothers and leading lady. "It's something like dying, I do declare," said Mae, and as she... more...

I. DR. DILLON TO EDWARD DELANEY, ESQ., AT THE PINES. NEAR RYE, N.H. August 8, 1872. My Dear Sir: I am happy to assure you that your anxiety is without reason. Flemming will be confined to the sofa for three or four weeks, and will have to be careful at first how he uses his leg. A fracture of this kind is always a tedious affair. Fortunately the bone was very skilfully set by the surgeon who chanced to... more...

VII SOCIOLOGY IN SERGE AND STRAW The season of irresponsibility is at hand. Come, let us twine round our brows wreaths of poison ivy (that is for idiocy), and wander hand in hand with sociology in the summer fields. Likely as not the world is flat. The wise men have tried to prove that it is round, with indifferent success. They pointed out to us a ship going to sea, and bade us observe that, at length,... more...