General Books

MRS. BLAKE. The cars were not over-crowded, and were moving leisurely along in the soft, midsummer twilight. At first, I had felt a trifle annoyed at my carelessness in missing the Express by which I had been expected; but now I quite enjoyed going in this mixed train, since I could the better observe the country than in the swifter Express. As I drew near the end of my journey, my pulses began to... more...

CHAPTER I THE GREAT SEA WATERSGray sky, brown waters, as a bird that fliesMy heart flits forth to these;Back to the winter rose of Northern skies,Back to the Northern seas.The sea is His, and He made it. I saw a man of God coming over the narrow zigzag path that led across a Shetland peat moss. Swiftly and surely he stepped. Bottomless bogs of black peat-water were on each side of him, but he had... more...

Along one of the most precipitous of the many Rocky Mountain trails a man and a woman climbed slowly one spring morning. The air was cold, and farther up the mountains little patches of snow lay here and there in the hollows. Two or three miles below them nestled one of the most famous pleasure resorts of the entire region. Three or four times as distant lay the nearest town of any importance. Over the... more...

CHAPTER I "The whole of this modern fabric of existence is a living lie!" cried Marzio Pandolfi, striking his little hammer upon the heavy table with an impatient rap. Then he dropped it and turning on his stool rested one elbow upon the board while he clasped his long, nervous fingers together and stared hard at his handsome apprentice. Gianbattista Bordogni looked up from his work without... more...

CHAPTER I.Say, who art thou—thou lean and haggard wretch!Thou living satire on the name of man!Thou that hast made a god of sordid gold,And to thine idol offered up thy soul?Oh, how I pity thee thy wasted years:Age without comfort—youth that had no prime.To thy dull gaze the earth was never green;The face of nature wore no cheering smile,For ever groping, groping in the dark;Making the soulless... more...

Three o'clock on a warm June afternoon. The great heat has caused something like a purple haze to cloud over the deep blue of the sapphire sky. There is not one breath of wind to stir the leaves or cool the flushed faces of those whose duties call them out on this sultry June day. Away in the deep green heart of the broad land broad streams are flowing; in the very heart of the green woods there... more...

CHAPTER I The passengers, one by one, left the train but Truedale took no heed. He was the only one left at last, but he was not aware of it, and then, just as the darkness outside caught his attention, the train stopped so suddenly that it nearly threw him from his seat. “Accident?” he asked the conductor. “No, sah! Pine Cone station. I reckon the engineer come mighty nigh forgetting—he... more...

CHAPTER I Michael Arranstoun folded a letter which he had been reading for the seventh time, with a vicious intentness, and then jumping up from the big leather chair in which he had been buried, he said aloud, "Damn!" When a young, rich and good-looking man says that particular word aloud with a fearful grind of the teeth, one may know that he is in the very devil of a temper! Michael... more...

CHAPTER I. PROLOGUE. But for a recent occurrence I should certainly not be telling the story of a friend, or, rather, I should say, of two friends of mine. What that occurrence was I will not here indicate—it is unnecessary; but it has not been without its effect upon my life and plans. If it be asked by those who may read these pages under what circumstances it became possible for me to acquire such... more...

First Meeting between a citizen in Spectacles and the Great Pleasure-Dog Behemoth; also of Charles Gardiner West, a Personage at Thirty. It was five of a November afternoon, crisp and sharp, and already running into dusk. Down the street came a girl and a dog, rather a small girl and quite a behemothian dog. If she had been a shade smaller, or he a shade more behemothian, the thing would have... more...