General Books

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 In the eastern side of the Dead Sea rose the citadel of Machaerus. It was built upon a conical peak of basalt, and was surrounded by four deep valleys, one on each side, another in front, and the fourth in the rear. At the base of the citadel, crowding against one another, a group of houses stood within the circle of a wall, whose outlines undulated with the unevenness of the soil. A zigzag... 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...

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...

CHAPTER I "A spirit . . .. . . . . .The undulating and silent well,And rippling rivulet, and evening gloom,Now deepening the dark shades, for speech assuming,Held commune with him; as if he and itWere all that was."SHELLEY'S Alastor. I awoke one morning with the usual perplexity of mind which accompanies the return of consciousness. As I lay and looked through the eastern window of my... more...

CHAPTER I. THE HOUSE IN BLOOMSBURY. "What about?" There are some houses whereof the outward aspect is sealed with the seal of respectability—houses which inspire confidence in the minds of the most sceptical of butchers and bakers—houses at whose area-gates the tradesman delivers his goods undoubtingly, and from whose spotless door-steps the vagabond children of the neighbourhood recoil as... more...

PROLOGUE. "Oh—Eny!" "Well, you needn't be angry, Vane. I kissed you this morning, you know." "That's no reason why you should kiss that chap, too! You're my sweetheart." "Is she? Well, she won't be much longer, because I'm going to have her." "Are you? Shut up, or I'll punch your head." "You can't—and, anyhow, you... more...

INTRODUCTION As yet the only woman winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, the prize awarded to Kipling, Maeterlinck, and Hauptmann, is the Swedish author of this book, "Jerusalem." The Swedish Academy, in recognizing Miss Selma Lagerlöf, declared that they did so "for reason of the noble idealism, the wealth of imagination, the soulful quality of style, which characterize her... more...

"I do mean it," declared Mrs. Korner, "I like a man to be a man." "But you would not like Christopher—I mean Mr. Korner—to be that sort of man," suggested her bosom friend. "I don't mean that I should like it if he did it often. But I should like to feel that he was able to be that sort of man.—Have you told your master that breakfast is ready?" demanded Mrs.... more...

CHAPTER I Hugh Fielding, while speculating upon certain obscure episodes in the history of a life otherwise familiar to an applauding public, and at a loss to understand them, caught eagerly at a simile. Now Fielding came second to none in his scorn for the simile as an explanation, possibly because he was so well acquainted with its convenience. 'A fairy lamp' he would describe it, quite... more...