Short Stories (single author) Books

"You ought to buy it," said my host; "its Just the place for a solitary-minded devil like you. And it would be rather worth while to own the most romantic house in Brittany. The present people are dead broke, and it's going for a song—you ought to buy it." It was not with the least idea of living up to the character my friend Lanrivain ascribed to me (as a matter of fact, under... more...

CHAPTER I In a secluded and mountainous part of Stiria there was in old time a valley of the most surprising and luxuriant fertility. It was surrounded on all sides by steep and rocky mountains rising into peaks which were always covered with snow and from which a number of torrents descended in constant cataracts. One of these fell westward over the face of a crag so high that when the sun had set to... more...

"There's absolutely nothing we can pin it down to with any real certainty," Kessler said. "No mechanical defects that we're sure of, no sabotage we can put our finger on, no murder or suicide schemes, nothing! We've put that plane back together so perfectly that it could almost fly again! We've got dossiers an inch thick on practically everybody who was aboard, crew and... more...

When I lived in the country,—which was a long time ago,—our nearest neighbours were the Luscombes. They were very great personages in the country indeed, and the family were greatly "respected"; though not, so far as I could discern, for any particular reason, except from their having been there for several generations. People are supposed to improve, like wine, from keeping—even if they... more...

He had been living with us for a week before I found out he was a Lifter. Even the discovery was an accident. I had started for the store, but then remembered a chore I wanted him to do. I heard the sounds of wood-chopping coming from the shed, so I went behind the house to the small wooden structure. I must have gasped or something, because he turned around to look at me, dropping the axe he had... more...

"Isn't the eternal-womanly everywhere? What has happened to you?"I asked. "I wish you would come to my house and see. Every rug has been up for a month, and we have been living on bare floors. Everything that could be tied up has been tied up, everything that could be sewed up has been sewed up. Everything that could be moth-balled and put away in chests has been moth-balled and put... more...

THE BIRD ON ITS JOURNEY, By Beatrice Harraden It was about four in the afternoon when a young girl came into the salon of the little hotel at C—— in Switzerland, and drew her chair up to the fire. "You are soaked through," said an elderly lady, who was herself trying to get roasted. "You ought to lose no time in changing your clothes." "I have not anything to change," said... more...

A Midwinter Madness. Genius has been defined as a capacity for taking pains. When a college man's good fairy makes her first call at his cradle, she may bestow upon him the football instinct, with muscles to match; no fairy could do more. But if she bumps up against Heredity, and is powerless to give him the supreme gift, she may compensate for it in a degree by leaving the kind of larynx and... more...

THE HOUSE OF MAPUHI Despite the heavy clumsiness of her lines, the Aorai handled easily in the light breeze, and her captain ran her well in before he hove to just outside the suck of the surf. The atoll of Hikueru lay low on the water, a circle of pounded coral sand a hundred yards wide, twenty miles in circumference, and from three to five feet above high-water mark. On the bottom of the huge and... more...

I had arrived at Inley Abbey that afternoon, and was sitting at dinner with Inley and his pretty wife, whom I had not seen for five years, since the day I was his best man, when we all heard faintly the tolling of a church bell. Lady Inley shook her shoulders in a rather exaggerated shudder. "Someone dead!" said her husband. "It's a mistake to build a church in the grounds of a... more...