General Books

CHAPTER I. THE LABOURER; AND HIS DAWNING DISCONTENT. Roger Acton woke at five. It was a raw March morning, still dark, and bitterly cold, while at gusty intervals the rain beat in against the crazy cottage-window. Nevertheless, from his poor pallet he must up and rouse himself, for it will be open weather by sunrise, and his work lies two miles off; Master Jennings is not the man to show him favour if... more...

CHAPTER I THE LESSON "Then he's such a prig!" said Olga. "You should never use a word you can't define," observed Nick, from the depths of the hammock in which his meagre person reposed at length. She made a face at him, and gave the hammock a vicious twitch which caused him to rock with some violence for several seconds. As he was wont pathetically to remark, everyone bullied... more...

A LIBERAL EDUCATION "There's ingratitude for you!" Miss Dolly Foster exclaimed suddenly. "Where!" I asked, rousing myself from meditation. She pointed to a young man who had just passed where we sat. He was dressed very smartly, and was walking with a lady attired in the height of the fashion. "I made that man," said Dolly, "and now he cuts me dead before the whole of... more...

I. Green rushes, long and thick, standing up above the edge of the ditch, told the hour of the year as distinctly as the shadow on the dial the hour of the day.  Green and thick and sappy to the touch, they felt like summer, soft and elastic, as if full of life, mere rushes though they were.  On the fingers they left a green scent; rushes have a separate scent of green, so, too, have ferns, very... more...

Bunker Bean was wishing he could be different. This discontent with himself was suffered in a moment of idleness as he sat at a desk on a high floor of a very high office-building in "downtown" New York. The first correction he would have made was that he should be "well over six feet" tall. He had observed that this was the accepted stature for a hero. And the name, almost any name but... more...

CHAPTER I HARPWOOD AND LOCKWIN Esther Wandrell, of Chicago, will be worth millions of dollars. It is a thought that inspires the young men of all the city with momentous ambitions. Why does she wait so long? Whom does she favor? To-night the carriages are trolling and rumbling to the great mansion of the Wandrells on Prairie Avenue. The women are positive in their exclamations of reunion, and this... more...

CHAPTER I Under a canopied platform stood a young girl, modeling in clay. The glare of the California sunshine, filtering through the canvas, became mellowed, warm and golden. Above the girl's head—yellow like the stalk of wheat—there hovered a kind of aureola, as if there had risen above it a haze of impalpable gold dust. A poet I know might have cried out that here ended his quest of the... more...

THE FARMER'S WIFE. It is an evening in June, and the skies that have been weeping of late, owing to some calamity best known to themselves, have suddenly dried their eyes, and called up a smile to enliven their gloomy countenances. The farmers, who have been shaking their heads at sight of the unmown grass, and predicting a bad hay-harvest, are beginning to brighten up with the weather, and to... more...

Section 1 The maid was a young woman of great natural calmness; she was accustomed to let in visitors who had this air of being annoyed and finding one umbrella too numerous for them. It mattered nothing to her that the gentleman was asking for Dr. Martineau as if he was asking for something with an unpleasant taste. Almost imperceptibly she relieved him of his umbrella and juggled his hat and coat on... more...

Chapter 1. The Wigwam Under the Rock The early springtime sunrise was near at hand as Quonab, the last of the Myanos Sinawa, stepped from his sheltered wigwam under the cliff that borders the Asamuk easterly, and, mounting to the lofty brow of the great rock that is its highest pinnacle, he stood in silence, awaiting the first ray of the sun over the sea water that stretches between Connecticut and... more...