General Books

CHAPTER I. NATURE IN TRAVAIL. "I say, professor?" "Very well, Waldo; proceed." "Wonder if this isn't a portion of the glorious climate, broken loose from its native California, and drifting up this way on a lark?" "If so, said lark must be roasted to a turn," declared the third (and last) member of that little party, drawing a curved forefinger across his forehead,... more...

FIGHTING SHRIMPLIN Custer felt it his greatest privilege to sit of a Sunday morning in his mother's clean and burnished kitchen and, while she washed the breakfast dishes, listen to such reflections as his father might care to indulge in. On these occasions the senior Shrimplin, commonly called Shrimp by his intimates, was the very picture of unconventional ease-taking as he lolled in his chair... more...

For a good many years now I have been carrying this idea round with me. It was more or less of a loose and unformed idea, and it wouldn't jell. What brought it round to the solidification point was this: Here the other week, being half sick, I was laid up over Sunday in a small hotel in a small seacoast town. I had read all the newspapers and all the magazines I could get hold of. The local... more...

When its turn came, the private secretary, somewhat apologetically, laid the letter in front of the Wisest Man in Wall Street. "From Mrs. Austin, probation officer, Court of General Sessions," he explained. "Wants a letter about Spear. He's been convicted of theft. Comes up for sentence Tuesday." "Spear?" repeated Arnold Thorndike. "Young fellow, stenographer, used to... more...

I ALTHEA Nothing impairedbut all disordered.—Midsummer Night's Dream. There are four guest-rooms in my house. It is not a large house, and how there came to be so many rooms to spare for the entertaining of friends is not a story to be told here. It is only a few years since they were all full—and not with guests. But they are nearly always full now. And when I assign each room it is after... more...

I Two old labourers came out of the lane leading to Great End Farm. Both carried bags slung on sticks over their shoulders. One, the eldest and tallest, was a handsome fellow, with regular features and a delicately humorous mouth. His stoop and his slouching gait, the gray locks also, which straggled from under his broad hat, showed him an old man—probably very near his old-age pension. But he... more...

CHAPTER I THE GRAY SEAL Among New York's fashionable and ultra-exclusive clubs, the St. James stood an acknowledged leader—more men, perhaps, cast an envious eye at its portals, of modest and unassuming taste, as they passed by on Fifth Avenue, than they did at any other club upon the long list that the city boasts. True, there were more expensive clubs upon whose membership roll scintillated... more...

CHAPTER 1 It was Sunday, and, according to his custom on that day, McTeague took his dinner at two in the afternoon at the car conductors' coffee-joint on Polk Street. He had a thick gray soup; heavy, underdone meat, very hot, on a cold plate; two kinds of vegetables; and a sort of suet pudding, full of strong butter and sugar. On his way back to his office, one block above, he stopped at Joe... more...

As long as Marcella could remember, the old farm-house had lain in shadows, without and within. Behind it rose the great height of Ben Grief, with his gaunt face gashed here by glowering groups of conifers, there by burns that ran down to the River Nagar like tears down a wrinkled old face. Marcella had read in poetry books about burns that sang and laughing waters that clattered to the sea for all the... more...

CHAPTER I. The professor crossed one long, lean leg over the other, and punched down the ashes in his pipe-bowl with the square tip of his middle finger. The thermometer on the shady veranda marked eighty-seven degrees of heat, and nature wooed the soul to languor and revery; but nothing could abate the energy of this bony sage. "They talk about their Atlantises,—their submerged continents!"... more...