Historical Books

Preface. The historical portion of this tale has been partially narrated in one of my previous volumes, “In All Time of our Tribulation,” in which the Despenser story is begun, and its end told from another point of view. That volume left Isabelle of France at the height of her ambition, in the place to reach which she had been plotting so long and so unscrupulously. Here we see the Nemesis come... more...

To begin, I am a Frenchman, a teacher of languages, and a poor man,—necessarily a poor man, as the great world would say, or I should not be a teacher of languages, and my wife a copyist of great pictures, selling her copies at small prices. In our own eyes, it is true, we are not so poor—my Clélie and I. Looking back upon our past we congratulate ourselves upon our prosperous condition. There was... more...

THE LOVE-PHILTRE OF IKEY SCHOENSTEIN The Blue Light Drug Store is downtown, between the Bowery and First Avenue, where the distance between the two streets is the shortest. The Blue Light does not consider that pharmacy is a thing of bric-a-brac, scent and ice-cream soda. If you ask it for pain-killer it will not give you a bonbon. The Blue Light scorns the labour-saving arts of modern pharmacy. It... more...

I The time was the year of grace 1779; the locality, Morristown, New Jersey. It was bitterly cold. A northeasterly wind had been stiffening the mud of the morning's thaw into a rigid record of that day's wayfaring on the Baskingridge road. The hoof-prints of cavalry, the deep ruts left by baggage-wagons, and the deeper channels worn by artillery, lay stark and cold in the waning light of an... more...

Let me begin by informing you, that this new novel does not present the proposed sequel to my last work of fiction—"The Fallen Leaves." The first part of that story has, through circumstances connected with the various forms of publications adopted thus far, addressed itself to a comparatively limited class of readers in England. When the book is finally reprinted in its cheapest form—then,... more...

CHAPTER 1 In such pursuits if wisdom lies,Who, Laura, can thy taste despise?—GAY The drawing-room of Hollywell House was one of the favoured apartments, where a peculiar air of home seems to reside, whether seen in the middle of summer, all its large windows open to the garden, or, as when our story commences, its bright fire and stands of fragrant green-house plants contrasted with the wintry fog... more...

CHAPTER I. POCKET ISLAND. In the year 185- a Polish Jew peddler named Wolf and a roving Micmac Indian met at a small village on Annapolis Bay, in Nova Scotia, and there and then formed a partnership. It was one of those chance meetings between two atoms tossed hither and thither in the whirligig of life; for the peddler, shrewd, calculating and unscrupulous, was wandering along the Acadian shores... more...

CHAPTER ONE IT is within my memory that Melville Clarendon, a lad of sixteen years, was riding through Southern Minnesota, in company with his sister Dorothy, a sweet little miss not quite half his own age. They were mounted on Saladin, a high-spirited, fleet, and good-tempered pony of coal-black color. Melville, who claimed the steed as his own special property, had given him his Arabian name because... more...

JOHN GAYTHER'S GARDEN The garden did not belong to John Gayther; he merely had charge of it. At certain busy seasons he had some men to help him in his work, but for the greater part of the year he preferred doing everything himself. It was a very fine garden over which John Gayther had charge. It extended this way and that for long distances. It was difficult to see how far it did extend, there... more...

CHAPTER FIRST And hurry, hurry, off they rode,As fast as fast might be;Hurra, hurra, the dead can ride,Dost fear to ride with me?Burger. There is one advantage in an accumulation of evils, differing in cause and character, that the distraction which they afford by their contradictory operation prevents the patient from being overwhelmed under either. I was deeply grieved at my separation from Miss... more...