General Books

CHAPTER I. CALDERWELL DOES SOME TALKING Calderwell had met Mr. M. J. Arkwright in London through a common friend; since then they had tramped half over Europe together in a comradeship that was as delightful as it was unusual. As Calderwell put it in a letter to his sister, Belle: "We smoke the same cigar and drink the same tea (he's just as much of an old woman on that subject as I am!), and... more...

CHAPTER I 'Are you to be at Lady Clonbrony's gala next week?' said Lady Langdale to Mrs. Dareville, whilst they were waiting for their carriages in the crush-room of the opera house. 'Oh yes! everybody's to be there, I hear,' replied Mrs. Dareville. 'Your ladyship, of course?' 'Why, I don't know—if I possibly can. Lady Clonbrony makes it such a point... more...

CHAPTER I Lost Hollow lies close at the foot of the mountain which gives it its name. The height of neither is great, geographically considered; the peak is perhaps eighteen hundred feet above sea level: The Hollow, a thousand, and from that down to The Forge there is a gradual descent by several trails and one road, a very deplorable one, known as The Appointed Way, but abbreviated into—The Way.... more...

THE STEWARD. Earl de Montford sat in a plainly furnished room in his stately mansion. Gorgeously decorated as were the other apartments of his princely residence, this apartment, with its plain business-look—its hard benches for such of the tenantry as came to him or his agent on business—its walls garnished with abstracts of the Game and Poor Law Enactments—its worn old chairs and heavy oak... more...

CHAPTER 1 Of all the remote streams of influence that pour both before and after birth into the channel of our being, what an insignificant few—and these only the more obvious—are traceable at all. We swim in a sea of environment and heredity, are tossed hither and thither by we know not what cross currents of Fate, are tugged at by a thousand eddies of which we never dream. The sum of it all makes... more...

PART I Opposite Miss Eudora Yates's old colonial mansion was the perky modern Queen Anne residence of Mrs. Joseph Glynn. Mrs. Glynn had a daughter, Ethel, and an unmarried sister, Miss Julia Esterbrook. All three were fond of talking, and had many callers who liked to hear the feebly effervescent news of Wellwood. This afternoon three ladies were there: Miss Abby Simson, Mrs. John Bates, and Mrs.... more...

CHAPTER I THE HOLD-UP The glowing coals in the spacious grate seemed to fascinate the woman as she sat huddled in a big luxurious chair. The book she had been reading was lying open and unheeded on her lap. Her surroundings were by no means in keeping with her dejected manner. The room was cosy and lavishly furnished, while the shaded electric reading-lamp cast its gentle radiance upon the woman's... more...

She loved him so, that when he went away to a little war in which his country was interested she could not understand, nor quite forgive. As the correspondent of a newspaper, Chesterton had looked on at other wars; when the yellow races met, when the infidel Turk spanked the Christian Greek; and one he had watched from inside a British square, where he was greatly alarmed lest he should be trampled... more...

THE EXILES. In the latter part of October, 1863, seven very anxious and dilapidated personages were assembled under the roof of an old, eight-storied tenement, near the church of St. Sulpice, in the city of Paris. The seven under consideration had reached the catastrophe of their decline—and rise. They had met in solemn deliberation to pass resolutions to that effect, and take the only congenial... more...

Of the school of earnest young writers at whom the word muckraker had been thrown in opprobrium, and by whom it had been caught up as a title of honor, Everett was among the younger and less conspicuous. But, if in his skirmishes with graft and corruption he had failed to correct the evils he attacked, from the contests he himself had always emerged with credit. His sincerity and his methods were above... more...